“Good Enough”

Rather Than What’s Next

Garth Beyer

I’ve gotten in the rotten habit of always thinking about what’s next.

I love checking projects and assignments off because it means I get to work with the next thing, but that, in a way, prevents me from moving forward faster.

Instead of always seeking the next thing, sometimes it pays off more to do more of what you’re doing, but differently.

Perhaps you’re in a job that is repetitive and it’s frustrating that you haven’t been promoted or asked to do different work. You can let your desire (and ultimate inability) to progress eat at your passion or you can direct that passion to experiment with what you have in front of you.

Simply because you’ve been blogging for a year doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get your book published. Maybe it’s time to blog differently and see if it resonates more.

When we are facing a barrier to what we want next, we can either let it destroy us, drain our energy, and make us question our direction or we can think about things differently, experiment with our work, and find a way to improve what we think is “good enough.”

 

Stay Positive & Doing Things Differently Might Be What’s Next

What The Successful Believe In

Garth Beyer

Keep On Keeping On

It’s only Tuesday and I’ve been reminded

1) relationships are everything. They build and attract new business. They provide insight you would have not received (or you would have learned the hard way) had you not made the connection. You will know if you’re on the right track in work and life based on the praise from those you’ve connected with. Nothing is more energizing than an hour spent turning a stranger into a friend or an hour spent with someone better than you.

2) you must have a definition of what’s good enough. Too often we work toward perfection and either never ship the product or we ship it too late. When it comes to logos at Aly Asylum, they have to pass the tattoo test. “Would you tattoo this logo on your arm?” If the answer is yes, then it’s good enough. Ship it.

3) ignore the naysayers. It’s on you to establish a mental and emotional filter, to allow and accept personal and helpful feedback while shutting out the negative, the criticism, the feedback many will call “constructive.” It helps to surround yourself with people who have a sort of forwardness to their personality. They act as a reflection of how something is, not how something should be or isn’t.

Now let’s get on with the week, develop some relationships, ship something daily, and shun the trolls.

 

Stay Positive & Keep On Keeping On

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Is It Ready To Be Shipped?

Garth Beyer

The true answer is no. It never will be.

The stories in Curb magazine have been edited by at minimum 5 other writers, but it wouldn’t hurt to have more people edit them. Also, the authors have all sat with at least two other experts to review their work. All in all, each story has been read for edits at least 20 times. Yet, they will never be ready to ship. There will always be more tweaks that can be made.

Alas, we’ll ship them because they are good enough.

As in, good, now enough.

So asking if it’s ready to be shipped is the wrong question. As long as it’s good enough to get the message across appropriately, then ship. Don’t waste time you can better spend working on the next project.

 

Stay Positive & Ship Something Everyday

Better Ideas Than Meeting Spec

Garth Beyer
  • Surpassing spec.
  • Spending a few nights building a new strategy plan and pitching it.
  • Finding ways to deliver promises faster.
  • Adding more or something different. Being generous. Giving goofball gifts.
  • Taking two minutes to make the message more personal and empathetic.
  • Showing clients the fun you had developing their plan.
  • Making larger promises and then surpassing them by over delivering.
  • Hiring a better editor.
  • Scraping the plan of mediocrity and tasks of ill-used time.
  • Trying something new.

 

Stay Positive & Meeting Spec Isn’t Good Enough (More on good enough)

Good Enough Or Perfection Fallout

Garth Beyer

If you haven’t heard of the term “satisficing,” then it’s time to listen closely. It’s much like “good enough” if you define that as “Good. Now, enough.”

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There are two sides to satisficing.The first is on you, the content creator. Perfection with your product or service might be able to be accomplished from time-to-time, but not consistently and it’s not what your clients or customers want. Understanding your audience is the second side of satisficing.

Herbert Simon who coined the term “satisficing” maintained that “individuals do not seek to maximise their benefit from a particular course of action (since they cannot assimilate and digest all the information that would be needed to do such a thing). Not only can they not get access to all the information required, but even if they could, their minds would be unable to process it properly.”

In laymen’s terms, even if people notice perfection, they have difficulty interacting with it. Most of the time though, they don’t notice perfection. This leads to a series of questions you need to ask yourself.

  • Why spend time on creating perfection?
  • What does my audience expect?
  • What is the most my audience can or is willing to process?
  • Can I create more by satisficing than I can creating perfection? (obv.)

Two extra bits about this:

1. Having an idea (not a goal!) of what perfection is at the beginning of a project puts you in a great position to start working. Beware, you will end up hairless trying to follow all the way through with that idea. (Either it will take so long to reach that you bald or you pull all of your hair out trying to make it perfect.)

2. Acknowledge the Juggler’s Perfection. The businesses and freelancers who make the most are those who create something that’s imperfect, perfectly.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Fall Out Of The Running By Trying For Perfection

Garth E. Beyer

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Questioning Error Correction

Garth Beyer

What if we corrected all the errors in the world? Would we be perfect?

If you answered yes, do you really believe it?

Does correcting errors bring out potential? Or merely suppress it and endorse mediocre?

If we got every student to get an A in each subject, would we have a world of inspired geniuses or a world of people who are just good enough in every area?

Getting a juggler to never make an error kind of defeats the purpose of a juggler doesn’t it?

If error correction is your goal, are you saying that being at a specific prescribed weight is worth giving up the slightly off track, but happy, minor error eating habits you have?

Do you think it’s fair to train one person to correctly do 10 tasks or 10 people to not only correct one task each, but to bring their creativity to that one task as well?

Only focusing on error correction kind of destroys any potential, any chance of growth of creativity and of art doesn’t it?

 

Stay Positive & Why Correct The Bad When You Can Amplify The Good?

Garth E. Beyer

 

The Difference Between Good And Great

Garth Beyer

The difference between a good factory worker and a great one is small.

If a factory worker is just good enough, then they are average, it’s expected. If a factory worker is great, they are still just good enough…or fired. Factory workers don’t get paid to be remarkable to invent a new way to do their work better or quicker. Nor do they get noticed when they are great, they are only ever viewed as good enough.

The difference between a good artist and a great one is incomparable.

A list of the top 100 vocal artists or even the top 1,000 don’t get there for being good enough, they get there by being great, by diving into their creative muse and ignoring constant prods to be average, obedient, disciplined and held back. They become great only by finding ways to do their work better and quicker, to be remarkable and to give their passion everything they have.

Now when you compare a good factory worker to a good artist, the artist is hands-down the better choice.

 

Stay Positive & What’s The Difference Between You And Them?

Garth E. Beyer