I didn’t know this was Facebook’s corporate motto. I learned about it from an article on NovaVizia.com: “26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I’d Known at 20.” It is the ninth “hack,” offering ideas on how to manage time more effectively.
For me, however, the motto “Done is better than perfect” is much more than advice on how to get more things done in less time. Sometimes, it is the key to being able to do any work at all—or even just to begin! I know quite a few people who have such high internal criteria for how things should look that they either never start the projects they most want to work on or, if they do start, they never finish them. How can you finish something if it never reaches the perfection of the ideal in your mind?
I know how paralyzing the desire for perfection can be. It can literally kill the talent of many people. That’s why I’m happy to pass on Facebook’s working motto. It reached me through NovaVizia.com. In turn, it reached them via a presentation on time management by Etienne Garbugli (a product design and marketing consultant from Canada). He, in turn, “hacked” the Facebook motto (along with many other examples of business success). And Facebook, in turn, hacked it from… I don’t know who.
However, I suspect that at the end of this long line of hackers stands none other than God himself. They say He created the world in six days and sat down to rest on the seventh. Well, now He is resting, and we are working to develop His creation.
But how can God’s creation need improvement if God is perfect? It’s like this—there is no such thing as perfection. There is only development and creativity through a series of attempts that we often call mistakes, but looking back, we realize they were the most valuable part—an expression of our courage to enter new territories and expand.
And that this very process of constant development is perfection.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
