Yamazumi Your Life!

Done Is Better Than Perfect

"Done is better than perfect". This pithy maxim has acquired new currency in the blogosphere recently, ever since it was spotted as a slogan adorning the walls of the Facebook offices. If it's good enough for the phenomenon that is re-shaping human social relations, the implication goes, then it's good enough for us. But how does this square with the concept of Six Sigma quality? And isn't the "good" really the enemy of the "best"?

In my mind, there is no contradiction. Six Sigma, the pursuit of the standard of excellence that allows only 3.4 defects per million opportunities, is specifically designed for stable, repeatable processes. The driver here is the quality expectations of the customer. The "done is better than perfect" philosophy is ideal for innovation, bootstrapping and one-off creative endeavours. An activity is first created in its "beta" form, and then refined up to the standards of Six Sigma quality.

The "done is better than perfect" slogan is so captivating because it highlights the inner tension felt by the classic Type A achiever personality. On the one hand, there is an intense desire to accomplish things; on the other hand, this is frequently restrained by a nagging, ingrained perfectionism that can limit output.

I am no psychologist, but an awareness of the finite nature of time should be a powerful spur to action. It's worth re-reading Andrew Marvell's classic metaphysical poem "To His Coy Mistress" to remind us that delay is, in the long run, fatal. The most famous and evocative lines are surely:

But at my back I always hear

Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

This is one of the most famous carpe diem poems in English literature, and while "done" should not encompass the shoddy, the poor quality or the harmful, it does imply that a good effort, made in good faith, counts for as much as perfection.

The irony is that quite often the urgency of time and an awareness of mortality adds the drive which allows true perfection to flourish. Another example from literature is Dostoyevsky. He was an intellectual idler, flitting through life enjoying flirtations with revolutionary groups and never achieving greatness. Robert Greene, among others, gives an outstanding account of what happened next in The 33 Strategies of War. Here is my take on the famous story: 

Dostoyevsky is arrested by the Tsar's troops for sedition. He is blindfolded and put in front of a firing squad. The last view he sees is of the sun shining bright on the golden cupola of a church, and then a cloud extinguishes the  sun. And so goes my life, he thought. The soldiers raise their rifles and the order is given to fire...

Suddenly a messenger cries "Stop!" There is a last minute reprieve and the penalty is mitigated to exile in the snowy wastes of Siberia. The Tsar had deliberately staged a mock execution to humble his victims. For Dostoyevsky, that moment changes everything. 

Suddenly he writes like a man possessed, knowing that the sands of time are slipping through his fingers. He creates masterpieces - Crime and Punishment, the Brothers Karamazov. He knows the fierce urgency of now.

He realizes that "Done is better than perfect", and in so doing, he achieves perfection.

 

(c) 2012 James Rozel

Do Less, Desire Less, Achieve More

The sheer addiction to compulsive action is perhaps the biggest risk our society faces today. Our economic system breeds an insatiable hunger for more - more possessions, more activities, more time, more information, more commitments. The result is not just less happiness, but a kind of deep unsettled restlessness. The fruit may be sweet, but the root is bitter.

Leo Babauta has commented that we are drinking from a "fire hose of information" and choking as a result. The phenomenon of relentless multiplicity - endless emails each requiring immediate, Pavlovian action - is well known. Real and virtual commitments blur as online social networks require nurturing but continuous involvement.

Our hearts are racing on the hamster wheel, keeping the debt-laden, morally bankrupt system revolving. Is this the only way?

It is not necessary to drop out of society to start restoring a healthy balance and stability to our lives. Start by using a Yamazumi board to track your daily routine. Where is the waste? But go beyond an efficiency focus to ask: What (task, goal, commitment, relationship)is truly necessary?

Instead of aggregating junk, take a leaf out of Richard Koch's thinking in "Living the 80/20 Way". Using Pareto thinking, discover what really adds the most happiness, joy and value to your life. Find those "happiness islands". Now multiply them.

Deep Thought: The Ralph Charrell Challenge

One of my favourite quotations is from author and success thinker Ralph Charrell.

"Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece".

I like this idea. To often we are shepherded not just into social conformity but into intellectual conformity as well. This week the skies over Europe were largely closed due to volcanic ash sent high into the atmosphere from an Icelandic volcano. Panic ensued. Governments banned flights. For the first time since the nineteenth century the skies over England were eerily silent. Hundreds of thousands of passengers were stranded. What would be next? A regression to horses and carts?

Then the airlines, which were losing millions, lobbied for a relaxation of the ban. New data was presented. New decisions were reached. And the planes immediately took to the skies again.

Nothing had physically changed. Thinking had changed. The quality of analysis, evaluation and reaction had changed.

Tony Robbins often speaks of people being held back by limiting beliefs. He is right. Many of these beliefs served a reasonable purpose at the time they were created and reinforcement has made them a self-fulfilling prophecy. But any real change will need those beliefs to be revisited and re-examined. The un-examined life is not worth living, said Socrates in Apology 38a.

I have been reading an old classic recently - "Choosing the Future" by Stuart Wells. While dated in parts, this book has aged gracefully like a fine wine. It's a book about thinking. The tendency among so many of us, even those trained in lean Six Sigma techniques, is towards action, unthinking limbic system driven responses. Wells offers a cogent and lucid analysis of what it means to think critically and effectively, without being drawn into analysis-paralysis or inertia. 

He offers a striking image. What would people think if at work you abandoned the phone calls, emails, and day-to-day seemingly urgently clutter of the job and actually thought, deeply, about your objectives and how to realise them. What would change as a result? Wells offers the following revelations:

1. We do not teach thinking

2. We want instant solutions and quick closure

3. We do not tolerate thinking

4. We have no patience for thinking

5. We pride ourselves on our practicality

6. We remain enslaved by our thoughts.

These insights are priceless. How many of us devote serious disciplined effort to building income streams, deploying lean Six Sigma techniques and investing in our own intellectual capital? 

I leave you again with those prescient, insistent and faintly unnerving words of Ralph Charrell.

"Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece".

Which are you?

 

 

(c) 2010 WestOcean