Great as the Enemy of Good

Welcome to Career Advise, the newsletter providing career advice, how-tos, and life musings through an optimistic and intriguing lens.

Today’s Pillar: Navigate the Gray

There’s a reason that we have Navigate the Gray as a topic of discussion here at Oppstartr ... the world that we live in is, most of the time, a shade of gray. Yes, there are some clear black-and-white issues, but most of the time, we face varying shades of gray.

People can have this notion that everything should be perfect and clear-cut, and anything less than perfect is bad, not suboptimal, but, in their opinion, bad. This is often what the phrase “don’t let great be the enemy of good” refers to. We cannot allow for the good, because it isn’t the best option. This is also known as the Nirvana Fallacy, and in our modern time, this is something I’ve seen pop up quite a bit where people can’t accept a good solution because it’s not the utopian solution. However, this utopian solution usually isn’t practical and ultimately blocks a good realistic solution.

Ideology can often take over as the ultimate good, but it seldom accounts for the situation on the ground.

This appears not only in our political and social lives but also in our professional lives.

How often have we let “analysis paralysis” take hold of us, and we spend too many resources on a small issue? We now pass up a good job because it wasn’t the “perfect” job. How many times have we scrapped a business idea because it wasn’t that million-dollar idea?

We can allow all of the latter examples and more to affect our progress and fulfillment, but we should be diligent and guard against this fallacy. Perfection is quite hard to do in almost anything (though we should strive toward it). Perfection would be nice, but good in practice is better than perfection in our minds, and it’s certainly better than bad in real life.

Remember: good is on the path toward great.

Thank you for reading Career Advise.

Please share this with those in your network, and check out our other posts and our homepage by following the buttons below.