When is “good enough” good enough?
When is “better than before” the goal we should aim towards?
What are the domains where nothing less than the best will do?
Three simple questions. But they’re far from easy to answer.
Whatever answer we settle on is dependent on context and circumstance.
What’s right today might be wrong tomorrow.
What’s good for one person is insufficient for another.
An answer isn’t valid just because we take it to be so.
The approach which served us well in one pursuit might be completely useless in a different situation.
Our outlook is malleable. But we usually forget this.
We think that “how we do anything is how we do everything”. That the cleanliness of a person’s house says something about their character, or that excellence in one area implies it in another.
Not so.
Ultimately, we are responsible for setting our own standards.
This doesn’t happen universally. We pick and choose the things we prioritise based on what we value.
The world at large might tell us that this matters more than that, these are the benchmarks we need to aim for, and this is the only way to fit in…
But those are just words. Projected expectations that we either go along with or disregard as data points (nothing more).
And based on the conclusions we come to, we’ll decide for ourselves what level of attainment we’re satisfied with from one domain to the next.
That’s not to say that our conclusions are true. Or even that they pass the ultimate litmus test: whether they’re useful.
Oftentimes, the standards we hold ourselves to are arbitrary.
Unspoken, and untested against reality – just things that we decided one day and have held in our heads since, allowing them to colour everything we do.
Unchecked expectations are dangerous. They can nudge us unconsciously towards ways of being and patterns of behaviour that don’t support the things we’d prioritise with a clear head.
Pursuing something you don’t care about is a guaranteed path to failure. Because whether you reach it or you don’t, you fail to get what you want.
There are some areas of our lives where aiming to do, be, and have the best we can is a worthwhile goal: one that unlocks new dimensions to our experience in ways we find profoundly meaningful.
There are some domains where the only worthy goal is progress, not perfection.
There are some pursuits where good enough is good enough – and anything beyond the bare minimum is wasted effort.
The specifics are different for everyone. But the underlying reality is the same…
- The quest for best when better is enough is a poisoned path.
- The pursuit of better when good enough is all we need? Exactly the same: a journey denoted by wasted resources and conclusions we won’t care about when we finally reach them.
- Settling at good enough – when we actually care about improvement, or complete self-actualisation – is a fast-track to regret.
It’s only by examining our actions with a clear mind that we can discern what approach is correct for us:
Right here, right now, like this.