Sometimes Doing a Perfect Job Means Stopping at 60%
Perfectionism produces wonderful results, but you can often produce even better results by setting your sights lower. Sound impossible? Click to learn how.
My boss Len gave me a t-shirt on my first day on the job. It read, “My standards are simple: I want it perfect.”
He thought he was giving me a subtle message about the quality of work he expected from me. Little did he realize that my standards for him were just as high.
We were working on a new curriculum for Harvard Business School. One of our goals was that each incoming student meet as many other students as possible, to form a strong community bond. You’ve seen a puppy pile? Imagine a puppy pile made up of 250 investment banker wannabes and you’ll have some idea of what we were trying for.
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I, being a perfectionist, created an Excel spreadsheet. A very, very large Excel spreadsheet. We would paste the student names into column B and click Print. The spreadsheet would compute a personalized schedule for each and every student—no two schedules alike—that insured each student would meet as many others as feasible, without alcohol (that’s very important. Harvard MBAs aren’t pretty when they’re drunk). Not only were the schedules unique, but they were beautiful! At my review, I asked Len how I was doing. He gave me the highest compliment I had ever received: “You are producing work at the 97% quality level. That’s absolutely amazing.” I felt great!
Then he said, “Of course, you spent 90% of your time getting the quality level from 83% to 97%. If you had simply settled for 83%, you could have gone home at night and eaten something other then gruel.”
My heart sank a bit, as I fantasized about how other people lived, and realized I could live just like them. But Len wasn’t finished. He delivered the coup de grace (that’s French for a psychological mixed martial arts move): “Of course, the students and faculty would have been perfectly happy with a 60% level. In fact, pretty much no one in the world except you and me would even notice the difference between 60% and 83%.” Then he went off and ran a Fortune 500 company while I pondered how my life could have gone so terribly, terribly off course.
The answer is in these three numbers: 97%, 83%, and 60%.
The Perfect
Ninety seven percent was my own internal quality goal. It was the desire to be best in class, world wide. I was like a bowler aspiring to bowl a 300 game, or Kim Kardashian aspiring not to make a sex tape for 10 consecutive minutes. Technically an attainable goal, but one whose achievement requires almost inhuman effort to reach. Efforts like this reach a point of diminishing returns. The closer you get to perfection, the more effort it takes to get even a tiny bit closer to the goal.
When choosing your aspirational quality level, remember that how long it takes you to reach that level is part of the definition. Saying “I want to write the world’s best vendor receivables report!” is all very well and good, but it could take you weeks or months to inscribe the numbers on parchment in gold leaf.
By then, vendors would have paid their bills and the report would be obsolete. A better quality goal would be “I want to write the best vendor receivables report that can be written in 5 days.” That way, you’ll limit the resources you pour into the effort to a reasonable level. Instead of gold leaf and parchment, you might just use a fountain pen and Levenger 60-pound rag paper.
Make sure your aspirational quality level has a timeframe attached, so you don’t pour unlimited resources into tiny gains (not that anyone would consider anything about Kim Kardashian tiny).
The Efficient
By shooting lower than 97%, I could reclaim vast amounts of time and effort once I got to the point of diminishing returns.
Learning to set your sights lower is just the first step towards reclaiming your life. By shooting lower than 97%, I could reclaim vast amounts of time and effort once I got to the point of diminishing returns. But if no one in the known universe but me could tell the difference between 83% and 97%, it only makes sense to shoot at most for 83% quality level. The extra effort and stress just isn’t worth it.
Now, if you’ve watched Breaking Bad, you may disagree. Walter White’s success as a drug lord was because his product was 97% pure. The market could tell the difference. That was fiction. You’re living in the real world. And besides, except maybe for the warehouse full of cash, Walter White’s 97%-pure empire wasn’t exactly inspirational.
When setting your sights, forget the absurd 97% altogether. At the very most,even if you have the time to do more, only work up to the point where you start getting diminishing returns.
The Useful
Which brings us to confront the least pleasant part of perfectionism: The market only wants a 60% quality level.
Even though I could produce 83% quality with relatively little effort, the market wouldn’t value it. Maybe I would get a return for my effort in terms of how I felt about my job, but I wasn’t likely to get any other kind of return. If the market wants Wal•Mart quality, they’re not going to pay more for Saks Fifth Avenue, even if you offer Saks quality.
Start your project shooting for the quality level the market wants. You may have your own reasons for doing a better job. Maybe you’re setting the foundation for a later product, or using the project as a chance to learn, or you’re desperately trying to impress your parents in a vain attempt to get them to stop treating you like a 12-year-old. But whatever your reason, remember that delivering quality above what the market wants is something you’re doing for you, not for them.
Your Numbers May Vary
These exact numbers change depending on who you’re working for, and what you’re doing.
Next time you begin a project, identify your personal perfection point. That’s the over-the-top, you’re-only-doing-it-for-yourself quality level. Add in a time constraint, so you don’t spend the rest of your life on the project. Next, find the point of diminishing returns. And finally, the quality level needed by the market. Shoot for market-level quality.
Then for your own satisfaction, you might put in effort up to the point of diminishing returns. But finally, it’s time to stop. Instead of spending the next 90% of the project trying to attain those last steps towards perfect, spend that time going off and doing something else awesome. Your product can be good enough, leaving you the time to make your life…perfect.
Perfection, progress over perfection, and 60% images courtesy of Shutterstock.
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About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
