Learning to accept "Good enough"

Hello 👋

Part of the reason I'm taking on this challenge of writing every day for a while is to learn to accept what is "good enough".

If I write every day I can't expect every single post to be amazing. But they can be good enough.

The same applies to other things, like the design and structure of the website.

I've gone through several iterations of the design of this website, but I feel I still haven't nailed it. Design is hard.

But if I ever want to get anything done, I need to recognise when it's good enough, push it, and move on. I can always come back to it later.

By the way, that is a trick I sometimes use: tell myself I'll come back to it later. I often never do because I have other stuff to do, but in the moment it makes it easier to accept something that isn't "perfect"

This is on my mind because Ali Abdaal recently spoke about the "inner saboteur". That voice in your head that tries to convince you to put things off.

It doesn't necessarily tell you not to do or publish something, instead it tries to convince you that

  • you should wait until you have more experience
  • it isn't polished enough yet, needs another review or two
  • maybe this isn't that valuable after all
  • (my favourite) maybe you should do X first, then it will make more sense to do this
    • maybe I should redesign my website before I start writing
    • maybe I should rewrite my bio first
    • maybe I should do more research on how to write good before I start
  • and many, many more

This voice will likely never go away. And maybe it shouldn't. There are times when it's right.

My goal is to lower the stakes. My writing doesn't have to be amazing or solve world peace. I'm just writing down some thoughts to share with someone.

I'm hoping that the more I do it, the easier it gets 🤞

See you tomorrow 👋


PS: In my effort to simplify my website yesterday I moved a bunch of stuff around and broke all the links 😁

Should be fixed now thanks to this post by Will Vincent 🙏