If a Job's Worth Doing

I met a guy who was addicted to brake fluid.  He said he wasn't, that he could stop at any time.

I don't want to stop on the subject of axioms.  For pilots the rhyme, "Red over white, you're alright," helps them keep the runway lights in the right order for landing and means safety.  Just so, axioms help us in our decisions and actions in life.  

Last week I shared off-handedly, "If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right."  So if an organization has dwindling clients or customers and yet what gets passionate debate in their meetings is how much or how little detail should be in the minutes, I think they're doing something not worth doing.  If the Titanic is sinking, who cares if I rearranged the deck chairs correctly (whatever that would be).

Paradoxically, I offer as wisdom, "If a job's worth doing, it worth doing not right." Here's what I mean and maybe it is just for the perfectionists out there.  Let's say a person gets 80% of their production done in thirty minutes.  The next two hours gets them another 10%.  The next ten hours gets them 4% more.  The next one hundred hours gets them 1% more.  Somewhere in there, let's say after two and a half hours, if he or she had said, "Not perfect but pretty good and good enough," they could have gone on to the next project.  Against the person who keeps going for the 100% on one project, the good enough person gets thirty or forty projects done.  If it's worth doing, it's worth doing and not getting hung up on perfection.

The other aspect of the axiom is that if we aren't failing some or not finding our results having imperfections, we may not be taking on big enough challenges or risking enough.  Ie, we're playing it safe or underneath our abilities.

I'm glad for whoever noted that Jesus didn't wait for Jerusalem to quiet down, for the disciples to get back up to the number twelve, for the disciples' doubts to be completely assuaged and their convictions finally forged before he gave them the Great Commission.  If we wait for everything to get perfect, we're not ever going to get started.  This is an important job and while not trying to do it wrong, if it's worth doing, it worth doing, and it's worth even dealing with doing some of it not right.