Good Enough Is Never Good Enough

Photo credit: the Italian voice / Foter / CC BY

Think about the last batch of content you created. It doesn’t have to be a lot — it can be a tagline, a caption, or a blurb. Now think about how you felt when you looked that content over and gave it thoughtful consideration. Did you:

A) Fall to your knees and thank the maker that you were able to give life to such breathtaking concepts.

B) Smile and wink at your co-worker, all the while thinking, “Yeah, this is the shit.” (The content, not the co-worker.)

C) Shrug and say, “It’s not my best, but it’ll do.”

D) Realize a chimpanzee flinging its waste at the screen would produce better content.

Believe it or not, scenario C is orders of magnitude worse than scenario D. If you’re sufficiently self-aware that chimp crap is better than your writing, you should be sufficiently aware that you’re in the wrong line of work. Pack up your stuff, hand in your two weeks’, and give plumbing a try. (That’s not a slight against plumbers, merely a suggestion of someplace to start that will keep you away from keyboards.)

If you’re a scenario C type, you might be in the right line of work, but you’re a bad person and you should feel bad. Why would you commit to anything that wasn’t your best? If you’re thinking that something isn’t your best, DELETE IT. You’ll be much too tempted to just pass it along to its eventual endpoint, where you’ll have the opportunity for your boss, your co-workers, and possibly the entire Internet community to let you know that it wasn’t your best work. How’s that going to feel? Exactly.

Look, we’re all human. You’re not going to be firing on the same number of cylinders first thing Monday morning as you will be Wednesday afternoon or Friday right after lunch. Your best work will vary and be highly subjective. But you know, deep down, whether you gave something a hundred percent. You know whether or not you left it all on the field. And you know when you’re phoning it in.

Don’t short-change yourself, your company, or your legacy. Go balls out or go home.

Hm. That looks good. I’m goin’ home.