RE: The Value of Giving Up: The Best we can Do is... Our Best
I see a big difference between doing your best and just doing a bad job at something. I think setting an reasonable expectations is more important.
I don’t always have the energy for my best but usually my second or third best can still crushes it. Sometimes you just got go for it otherwise you lose out on opportunity. Not to mention what I view as my best someone might not. Sometimes my second best is what people just prefer.
I could write 4k+ word blogs with 30 screenshots/photos in each of them. That is what I consider my best. While I could do that they are very time consuming. I would not be producing much content anymore. I usually reserve that level making certain kinds of reviews.
I can still be happy in terms of wellness in creating something 1k+ words and a couple of screenshots/photos.
I like your point. I am a more of an advocate of the “80% solution now vs 100% solution tomorrow” approach.
I think the venue and format dictates a lot. If you are publishing something in a journal or a periodical, then it makes sense to give it everything you have and do your very best. But on a platform like this it just seems like that is a recipe for burnout and discouragement.
Even practically speaking, my gut feeling is that you are more likely to build engagement and pick up followers by posting a few shorter posts rather than one longer, but higher quality one. The odds of people seeing one of your posts is higher the more you have out there. Of course, you need to balance quality to make sure you’re not putting out a bunch of garbage, but like you said, oftentimes your 2nd or 3rd best is good enough.
Some relatively wise person once made the statement to me that "perfectionism is the enemy of accomplishment."
At the time, I seem to remember it was mostly designed to shake me out of my stupor... but in retrospect, it makes a good bit of sense. What good is a perfect article, a perfect project... if it never actually gets done and sees the light of day?
My efforts here are mostly designed to encourage engagement and interaction... not to win literary awards. But I still want to feel reasonably good about "putting my name" on what I publish.
Interesting and certainly relevant distinction there. And I realize that also holds true for myself: I could write perfect "articles" every time, but it would lead to a pretty limited publication schedule, because that would be ridiculously time consuming.
In most cases, the place I end up at is one where I feel comfortable at the idea of saying "yes, I created that!" and not feeling like I just want to creep into a hole and not be seen. So really, that's more about a level of caring than anything else.
And I mean that also as it applies to life outside of Steemit; outside of writing.