“Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.” - Harriet Braiker
"Better than before" is better than "better than everything else"
These quotes are generated thanks to Momentum Dash. It is a nifty tool that “is a personal dashboard designed to eliminate distraction and provide inspiration, focus, and productivity.”
Who is Harriet Braiker?
Dr Harriet Braiker was a social and clinical PhD psychologist, best-selling author, and internationally-renowned expert in women’s issues. She was the first to publicly identify that women experience more and different types of stress than men.
She coined the term "Type-E stress" – the E being Everything to Everybody – to help women better understand that in trying to be Everything to Everybody, they subjected themselves to a completely different and more debilitating type of stress than men experience.
- From https://www.harrietbraiker.com/
Why is this quote relevant?
It is one of those timeless quotes that help us remember which pursuits are worth pursuing - small, continuous improvements than a single goal of perfection that cannot be defined.
There's a good mathematical illustration of how improving by just 1% every day will lead to an improvement of 3,680% in a year as shown here.
I know from personal experience that perfection is not an ideal target. A digital product that I was a part of underwent revision after revision after to the extent that the final product was not even relatable to the initial one. Not to mention the ungodly delays in the launch. Don't be that person, I regularly tell myself.
Where can this be seen in action?
This is an anecdote from James Clear about cycling in Great Britain. They improved by one per cent in many areas—they also experimented with massage gels(!) to improve efficiency. It led them to resounding victories in the 2008 and a record-breaking run in the 2012 Olympics is a very nice example of how slight but continuous improvements can add up to something massive.
How can this be implemented?
Here is an interesting article from enterpreneur.com about making tiny changes in our everyday lives. And if you are among those who want to go all in to optimise improvement, then this tip is for you.