Never Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good

One of the most common pieces of academic advice I give to people is to never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Sure, it is a cliché, but I have seen far too many people stop doing everything simply because they are convinced that they could do something better. This may sound like a noble pursuit of knowledge, but it is more often than not a cover-up.

There are some truths embedded in this insecurity. There is no perfect presentation or essay. There is always room for improvement. Your good work can always become better. That is true.

It is also true that striving for perfection is good and admirable. I have always attempted to turn in the best work I was capable of, and I do not offer this advice as an excuse to not try to do the best you can. It is good to want to do as close to perfect work as you are capable of.

The problem comes when these truths create fear-based paralysis. We become fearful that because our paper is not perfect and because we always could do more work on it, we can’t move on to the next step. Even if we have gone over it many times and do not see any glaring errors that must be addressed, we hold back anyway because there is an extraordinarily slim possibility that maybe we missed something and fear embarrassment. Maybe what we thought was a convincing argument will be entirely disproved when critics review it. Maybe our presentation made a great deal of sense to us, but the audience wasn’t connecting to the point we were trying to make.

I’m not going to lie to you and say that these things are impossible. We have all found ourselves in situations where our work was not received well. However, kind of like all of the irrational fears you had as a child, they happen far more often in your imagination than they actually do in real life. I have seen some posts on Facebook lately about people laughing that they thought quicksand was a whole lot more common in their childhood than it actually turned out to be in the real world. The probability of actually becoming trapped in quicksand is a whole lot lower than they ever thought it would be. The utter embarrassment that we imagine when we put ourselves out there is a lot like that. It can happen, and it is not pleasant. However, we are all experts at exaggerating our own fears and turning the proverbial molehill into a mountain.

If this post describes you, then you might be wondering what to do about it. How do we get over this paralysis?

I won’t claim to be an expert on this topic, but it is rare that I run into this situation myself. Part of it is probably because I do have a good deal of natural confidence (not always a good, beneficial, or virtuous thing). However, I think the more important reason that I do not suffer from this condition is because I have run into a whole lot of walls. I have submitted articles I really like and had them outright rejected.

Right before I started working on this post, I was looking at an article I had written last year. I felt really good about this article. I thought it was a relatively unique take and added to the literature on the topic. I still haven’t found anyone who wants to publish it. I have had some interest in this paper if I essentially rewrite it and change my entire argument, but that still doesn’t change the fact that my estimation of what was good in this case is different than a lot of other people.

However, the reason I mention this story is because the embarrassment part, the thing I think causes the majority of the fear, has never happened. Yes, people have rejected it, but they have not been unkind about it. They have not belittled me. They have not accepted my paper, which is regrettable at least from my perspective, but it has not been all that unpleasant. Hopefully I will find a publisher for it someday, but that’s not even the main point here. Because I have run into that wall, I know the wall is not all that bad. The wall does not deserve all the attention we give it. You hit the wall, you bounce off the wall, and you figure out how to get over the wall.

I don’t mean to be belittling your concerns or your fears. I get it. I have talked to far too many people about this issue to just say you need to get out of your head and face your fears. It is not that simple, and I want to be sensitive to that. At the same time, I want to offer you some encouragement to do just that.

One of the papers I recently published came back with a laundry list of edits requested during the peer review process. This list suggested modifications to just about every element of my article from the basis of the thesis itself down to word choice in specific sentences. While I did not agree with every critique that came back from that review, I incorporated many of them into my article, improved it, and the paper was ultimately accepted for publication.

Even when the thing that makes so many people nervous happened, it made my paper better and therefore created a positive outcome. Therefore, I think it is a question of reframing our approach to doing challenging things. Even a rejected, or at least not automatically accepted, paper is an opportunity to get feedback to make the paper better. Even if that publication turns out not wanting it, at least you now have some advice to take into consideration. Maybe you will agree with it like I did in the second paper, or maybe you will disagree with it as I did with my paper that still is looking for a home. However, at an absolute minimum, there is much to be gained from hitting the wall.

Experience is far more important than embarrassment, and embarrassment rarely happens to the degree that we imagine it will. We might feel embarrassed, but in reality, once you get used to it, it isn’t all that bad. If you remember the movie The Mighty Ducks, you will remember how the team answers after Coach Bombay asks them if they think losing is funny. “Not at first, but once you get the hang of it…” I kid, but there is some wisdom in taking our losses lightly. Yes, we ought to do our best, something that youth hockey team was not doing at the beginning of the movie, but we also need to recognize that these exaggerated fears will soon be forgotten, and the experience is far more valuable.

I know I sound basically like a motivational speaker who is just telling you to believe and you can achieve. However, it is vitally important that we don’t paralyze ourselves and refuse to do anything out of fear. We may justify our paralysis by saying that we want our work to be absolutely perfect, but it will never be perfect. Therefore, we need to do our best with the resources we have, and then we just have to jump in. We give embarrassment a far bigger portion of our mind that it deserves, and we discount the importance of experience.

As a practical application for you, if you struggle in this area, I would recommend giving a paper that you really like to a journal and see what happens. Maybe they will take it, maybe they won’t. If they take it, great and congratulations! If they do not, you will get some feedback, and while it might hurt a little bit, you are desensitizing yourself. You can take that advice, make the paper better, and find somewhere else to try it with. Your chances are now better because you have a better paper, and you are little bit less fearful because you realized what I have said is true.

I know this is a challenge for so many, and I just encourage you to not hide yourself behind the line that your work isn’t good enough yet and you want it to be perfect before you try to do anything with it. Most of the time that is just a cover for insecurity. Don’t let that insecurity dominate your work.