"Doing it the RIGHT Way" — How Things Tend to Take Longer Than Expected
There are many days on which I'll start writing a Hive post sometime around 8:00am, but it won't actually find its way to the public feed until some 12 hours later.
Whereas I have (mostly) left behind the disease known as "perfectionism," I still like to do things properly — or at least my interpretation thereof — not just when it comes to blog posts, but with respect to pretty much any project or work I undertake.
My editing clients definitely appreciate that; especially when I manage to turn "a horrible mess" into a "readable manuscript."
For a while, I wrestled with the perfectionism demon, but I soon enough realized that taking the time to get something right was mostly a reflection of the fact that as I — and lots of other people — go through life, the things we tend to really like and enjoy are typically also the ones where whomever created "it" took the time to make sure that whatever they sent forth in the world would be subject of enjoyment rather than frustration.
Consider the frustration of trying to accomplish something important via a website and it turns out to be endlessly annoying because there are "missing parts" and some input form is in no way intuitive, and there may even be a broken link or two. Or the FAQ you need leads to a blank page.
Consider the KD furniture you just bought where the instructions seem like they were written by hamsters on meth and some of the parts are warped or broken, before you even get the thing assembled.
Sometimes it's much smaller stuff: Our bank's log-in page for online banking has "Enter Password" in the space where your username goes, and even though the words are "grayed" they don't disappear when you start typing, so you have to erase them from that field before logging in.
So what am I driving at here?
In our fast paced world, it seems like there is a lot of pressure to get things done quickly, and yet we still would like for them to be functional and live up to our expectations. Well, it takes time to do things right!
Sure, we can throw stuff together in the fastest possible manner... as I witnessed many times when I worked in the IT industry... and fix the shortcomings with a later "patch." Unfortunately, that is also the quick route to "three-star reviews," and worse. If your "out-of-box-experience" is lousy that can undermine an entire project; an entire impression.
Around here, we often complain about new developments on the main site and in communities "taking a long time," but we're also unrelentingly critical when something doesn't work properly because it was released before it was ready.
Our Easter Bunnies have arrived early, it seems...
"Why didn't they TEST this!?!?!" we scream, blithely overlooking the fact that the reason they didn't "test it" as much as it should have been was that we were also SCREAMING at them for taking too long. Sometimes we humans behave like a bunch of spoiled brats waiting for Santa Claus!
But getting back to the point at hand, my "morning" posts often publish at night because (a) it takes longer to put together a well-crafted post and insert images to create a decent appearance and (b) my daily work often takes longer than expected because I choose to do a good job, rather than a sloppy one, so I end up with less time on my hands.
Could be that I am just a relic from a time that no longer exists, and I should just get onboard with "half-assed" as the de-facto standard in the world of 2021...
Naaaah... not gonna happen!
I still wish the bank would fix it's effing web site, though... I've written to them at least half a dozen times.
The point here is that it's a pretty small deal, in the greater context of life.
However, if every small mistake/shortcoming gets moved from the "needs to be fixed" column to the "Uhhhh... whatever" column, we're soon enough going to end up living in an "Uhhhh... whatever WORLD!"
Maybe we already do...
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!
How about YOU? Do things generally take longer than you expect? Or at you pretty good at timing things? Do you notice the world becoming "sloppier" because we have less time to do things properly? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20210304 13:56 PST
0199/1442
Have you noticed that almost every update makes something cease to work, and instructions are written by CHINESE hamsters on meth!
I always was of the mind to "do it right" so one didn't have to return to it later. Then clean up after yourself! That's part of doing it right!