Actually, we are entering our rainy season, so I suppose that a few soggy days shouldn’t come as a surprise. On the other hand, I am also in a proverbial, “When it rains, it pours,” work situation with a major project that I am crashing on. In the technical writing side of my life, I handle some fairly complex projects for a couple of clients. These usually come with tight deadlines and frequently with ridiculously tight deadlines. This is one of those cases with a need for a particular talent that I have and with only about half the time that I need to do it as well as it should be done. However, there are times when the 90% solution does work. And that leads me to a point about allowing “perfect to be the enemy of good.”

There are indeed jobs that require incredible precision where the smallest error can cause significant problems. For example, we have a nuclear power plant close by and those people need to be really good at their jobs and I don’t want to hear, “Ooops” from a surgeon. On the other hand, in something like a writing situation, you can almost always improve on what you say and how you say it. The same goes for when you are planning an event. There is almost always another “cool” thing you can add. In the Army, there is a phrase of, “the good idea cutoff time”. It is exactly what it sounds like in that as you are developing a plan, you set a time where no more “good ideas” are entertained. There are moments when something is good and meets the requirement, and yes, it could be better, but it’s okay to stop. One of the things about experience is learning to differentiate between those situations where 100% really is needed and when 90% or maybe even less is acceptable. “Good enough” is not always a correct answer, but it frequently is.