Skip to main content

To Error or Not to Error

If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"                -John Wooden

Lately it seems that a lot of web services have been making some major snafus. Both Yahoo and LinkedIn have been compromised over the last couple months and sites like Facebook and Google are constantly experiencing bugs in their services and interfaces.

This makes me wonder, "Is it acceptable for big companies to make mistakes?"

When I was a little kid, my mother had a sewing area in our family laundry room. On the wall above the sewing machine my mother had hung this quote:

If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

Whether I was doing long division or drafting a mechanical spec drawing, I was instructed to do them correctly by aligning my number columns correctly and drawing my lines straight and with consistent line weight. Taking time to do things correctly from the beginning of a process became a tenant of how I functioned as a young adult and has stuck with me as I have proceeded in my professional life.

Whenever I set out on a new project, I make it my first priority to not make any errors. The constant worrying thought of "Who will see my app and what will be their experience?", causes me to constantly fix things as I create them (I just noticed that I edit grammar and spell check as I type).

I wonder if this anxiety hinders my creativity and keeps me from truly allowing spontaneous thought to flow during the initial stages of a development project. Am I so worried with being perfect, that I sabotage myself from truly unlocking my greatest ideas?

In some areas of my life, I know I have a perfectionist in me. It might be called OCD or "attention to detail", but whatever it is, what are the side effects on my ability to be truly creative?

It seems the only way that I will ever truly find out the answers to these questions, is to force myself to accept that I will make mistakes if I lower the flood gates. So, I am left with a concept that goes against that defining tenant I have held dear to all of these years.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Perseverance is the key to success

Perseverence is the key to success. I have heard this quote before used in many contexts, but it has become a reality for me lately. During this unprecedented time of Covid-19 quarantine, I have been challenged in many ways. Challenged to be a good husband, a good father and a good employee. It has not been easy and it has been a heavy burden to carry. I have struggled to maintain the balance of all these things and I have failed more drastically then when I was able to leave the house each day to separate these responsibilities physically. It has been a learning experience for me in how to control my thoughts, speak only after thinking and generally controlling myself when I get frustrated or tired. But, it has not been all bad. I have had more time to spend with my family and that ultimately is a good thing. This season has reminded me to be more present and more involved in the day by day routine of our household. Learning to share the responsibility of looking after our child...
5 comments
Read more

New Year and New Routines

 I am generally not a New Years resolution type of person. If I am being honest with myself, I am too lazy and too fickle to stick to any regiment. I feel it is silly to set expectations for myself that I know I will just forget about and give up on. I don't know if that makes me a pessimist or and optimist? I feel indifferent about it, I believe. The new year is at the end of a long holiday season and generally realize my good habits slack during the holidays, especially in regards to eating and health. I know enough about myself to admit that. So, I guess I know I need to respond to this waning of dietary discipline and refocus my efforts on getting myself back into a healthy state of nutrition and body awareness. I just want to feel better and be less self-conscious about my body. It really is taxing and robs a ton of joy from my life.  So, I am once again "working it", by counting calories in my phone app and making sure to cut out as much sugar from my diet. I have b...
2 comments
Read more

Sticking with it!

It is has been a rough few months, but at the same time very exciting.  My family and I have moved into a brand new home this Summer and that is amazing. But, the stress and anxiety of moving during a quarantine was not easy, especially with the accelerated time table we had to sell our old home. It was just hard. Then there has been the California fires and the inability for us to go outside for over a full month due to smoke. It has been a double whammy of isolation and it has taken its toll on our family as I am sure it has on other families.  My personal weight loss goals had been on pause as I was trying to continue to work from home and parent full-time. During this whole time, I have not been able to lose weight at my desired rate, but I am thankful that I have not gained any weight. That is a victory! That changed as of this last week. I started to aggressively watch my calories again this last week and I am happy to say that I am now down to 214lbs! That is a total of...
3 comments
Read more