Rob

YOU know you did your best or didn't. That is a reward in itself.

There is nothing more depressing than knowing that you didn't go for it, that you were mediocre on purpose. It is one of the worst feelings you can feel. Even if you justify why it was ok and how no one else doesn't anything anyway, etc. you'll not be ok with it at all.

Then the next time it will be easier to give 35% or whatever you deem to be “acceptable”. What a horrible existence!

Reading over your post made me realize how some people just probably give up on perfection because someone has come along and said that they aren't even close because of some reason or other. When a person is told they aren't able to do something long enough they sometimes believe them.

With some things, like art, perfection is relative. It is a viewpoint. I may write a story and consider it done, perfect. Someone else may read it and decide it isn't. I suppose if enough people think it is flawed I should look at that, but I tend to be a bit stubborn. I don't like to rewrite a piece until the life is stripped out of it. I prefer to move on (unless of course I'm writing for a client, but I've been wonderfully fortunate is having clients who trust my judgment).

In your case, with the album, you definitely made the right call. He loved it. Sounds pretty perfect to me. Sometimes those little “flaws” are part of the perfection. Maybe that was part of the charm to him.

I'm not so sure about the right and the wrong in this, but I know what factors motivate me to turn out something less than perfect, or to be pendant to the last.

An example is a photo album I made for a friend's fiance yesterday. It's something he can give to her for her birthday, it's custom made, with a lilac satin covering and a satin lily on the front. All hand made.

There's also a number of flaws.

The first is that the glue the shop assured me was fine for fabric turned out to be messy and didn't stick all that well without using a lot and it made marks on the fabric, fortunately nothing too obvious on the outside. The second is that the internal pages lining the cover didn't stick down nice and smooth either. The third is the cardboard i used isn't cut totally straight.

My friend loves it, he hasn't given it to his fiance yet, but those flaws bug me.

Here's what motivates me to send this one and not start again;

- My friend loves it. He's happy with it.
- It took me several hours to do, and I'm limited in how much I can do in a day.
- The cost of the materials was much higher than I expected, so I can't afford to do it a second time.
- There isn't time to do it again before her birthday.

These are all reasonable factors, however it still bothers me that the album isn't as good as I'd hoped. Admittedly it was my first try, but I like things to be a good quality.

Other times I've settled for less was when I was working to a prohibitive time limit that I couldn't extend, when I was working with a client who simply wouldn't listen to reason (I've taken to avoiding those types of clients now), and when I've already spent far more time on a project than is reasonable for my schedule. None of these are justification, they're just factors. I also find that my own personal motivation plays a role, after long enough you just get too tired to think properly about something.

Some things that help me to polish off a project;

Working in little chunks
Taking a day's break
Getting opinions from colleagues
Making a checklist of the important elements
Making sure I'm keeping my health up and my stress levels low, with regular breaks, snacks, etc.

I also think that 100% is possibly a transient term, it's like the word 'perfect'. It all comes down to perception. There are in many instances a measurable bench mark (for example the cases of wrong children being given to parents, or tax figures being added up incorrectly) but in many other instances it can be hard to define perfection. There are obvious standards of work in most professions, but the line between perfect and 99.5% is very fine and a lot of it comes down to personal taste, particularly in industries like mine – graphics and web design.

So perhaps instead of wondering whether less than perfect is ok or not, maybe the question should be around what can be done to help facilitate the best possible result. For example, human error can never be totally avoided, but if Drs were limited to the number of hours they could work in 24 (like truck drivers are), then perhaps medical procedures would go more smoothly. I'm not sure if they are limited or not, but I knew a dr who routinely worked fifteen hour shifts and survived on coffee – it's a scary thought.