The Manual #4
The prison of perfection.
Don’t let perfection stop you
I’m currently putting together a guide on building your own e-commerce business but when putting together that guide I realised something that I had not put down in words before, perfection is unattainable.
Whenever I make something, whether it be in the past or now, I always have this feeling of wanting it to be perfect. I want it to look a certain way, make a slight adjustment or change something entirely. I realised this is the prison of perfection.
And the prison of perfection is completely ok. It’s ok to be in that prison. It’s ok to have that feeling.
That feeling for me when I first started making and releasing products held me back a ton. I didn’t want to share what I had made or release what I had made because I didn’t think it was perfect enough.
You have to get past that feeling and just share the damn thing. Even if it gives you an awful cringe feeling inside. Because the only way to achieve anything near perfection is to keep making and sharing.
You don’t go to the gym, do one workout and expect to look like The Rock (maybe The Rock isn’t a good example because of steroids, but you get the idea!). It takes months and years of work. Think of your projects as the same. You’re not going to make the perfect product in one day. It’ll probably take weeks, months or even years of iterating for it to be near perfection.
Even when it is near perfection there will probably always be some little thing you want to change. Don’t stress about it. It’s something we can all learn to be better at.
As much as I love design and applying to all parts of my life, this tweet by James Wang really stood out to me. James isn’t wrong here. Amazon isn’t known for “good design”, cool colours, flashy web pages or anything like that.
But Amazon is actually amazing at design. It’s just that it’s not the traditional design we think of when we look at something with our eyes. They’re amazing at the design of using their website and the user experience, the stuff we take for granted.
Amazon make it so easy to browse for products. They make it easy to find what you’re looking for. They make it easy to see all of the info you need to for a product. Browsing the tons of menus they have are actually very navigable. The checkout process is smooth. This is incredible design. We just don’t see it because we expect it. It’s why browsing other similar websites seem a pain in the ass.
Good design isn’t just the way it looks. It’s also how it works.
Link Lowdown
A collection of links to stuff I think worth sharing.
Spline — A new 3D design tool. Really easy to get the hang of. Quite basic but it’s a good way to get into 3D design if you’re interested.
Apple Wallpaper — Someone turned the One More Thing event into a wallpaper.
iPhone 4S in Frame — A cool piece of art where they turn old devices into framed pieces of art, by tearing them apart and putting their components on display.
Time To Say Goodbye To Google Fonts — An interesting short article on how you should actually host your own fonts rather than linking to Google Fonts. This is making me rethink using Google fonts on my own websites now!
Razer Tomahawk — Razer have finally started shipping their awesome looking SFF gaming PC. Love the minimalist style of it.
Herman Miller Cosm — I think this might be the best looking office chair out right now. This will be a classic.
Roy — A simple color picker for Mac.