Why "Better" is Better Than "Best"

I recently introduced the concept that "progress works backwards", meaning that growth toward a desired goal generally happens in incrementally improving stages. I find a lot of hope in the idea that what initially seems like "failure" is more productively viewed as useful feedback on the path to ultimate success.

A corollary philosophy to the above idea is the interesting concept that "better is often better than best". This may initially seem to be a confusing and contradictory statement, but the idea is actually both simple and comforting.

As Geri Larkin wrote in "Stumbling Toward Enlightenment", "It's never a straight line." Any sustained endeavor is undoubtedly going to have its ups and downs. Setbacks are an inevitable byproduct in the pursuit of any worthwhile goal.

People who attend 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous are intimately familiar with the valuable concept of "progress, not perfection". Many therapists have recognized that perfectionism is often accompanied by it's "evil twin" of procrastination which halts all effort toward improvement. People who seek to do something perfectly often get discouraged and quit making any effort once they fall off the mark. As George S. Patton observed, "A good plan implemented today is better than a perfect plan implemented tomorrow."

Some ideal goals serve to inspire people while being forever impossible to attain. I often think of sailors throughout history who navigated their ships across vast expanses of ocean by using the North Star as a constant reference point. Similarly, the goal of absolute perfection can never be reached, even though it can be useful in setting and maintaining a course of action.

While I've previously written that relatively minor improvements often result in remarkable positive changes, the inverse proposition is true: past a certain point of improvement any continued effort is going to yield smaller and smaller gains. This reality has long been referred to as the law of diminishing returns.

There's a popular saying in business circles that "the good is the enemy of the great." This philosophy is often used to justify ever-increasing demands toward perfection. It implies that people or organizations that settle for 'mere adequacy' are inherently failing in their efforts by not striving toward a greater goal. Anything short of perfection becomes by definition mediocre. What a standard!

Ironically this aphorism turns out to be a mistranslation of a quote by by the French philosopher Voltaire, who actually wrote that "the perfect is the enemy of the good". Rather than claiming that what is "good" is inherently inferior to what is "perfect", Voltaire was warning that the quest for perfection carries its own demons. One of my friends once said "My old car can get me to most of the same places a Mercedes goes." I bet he's going to live a long life.

This idea brings to mind the provocative saying that sometimes "less is more." Rather than attempting to do too much, a certain simplicity of action is often a mark of wisdom and quiet power. This is similar to the concept of "addition by subtraction", meaning that it is often better to reduce or eliminate negative components rather than trying to pile on more positive ones. For example, if an apple in a bag is rotten, it makes more sense to simply remove it than to futilely expend energy searching for the elusive "perfect" bag. Similarly, it is often far more efficient to reduce whatever distracts from a goal instead of getting frustrated and exhausted by "trying harder".

By the way, in my journey through the human psyche I've also come across the idea that "worse is better". This seemingly contradictory statement simply means that dismantling something is often necessary before reconstructing it in a more improved form. A person experiencing active withdrawal from a drug addiction, for example, is going to temporarily feel worse to the exact measure that he or she is actually getting better. Likewise, in some cases two people in a deeply troubled relationship may need to separate before reuniting to form a healthier partnership with each other.

One of my favorite books is "The Spirituality of Imperfection", whose author, Ernest Kurtz, brilliantly demonstrates the inestimable benefit of recognizing and accepting the reality of humans as imperfect beings. Much of human interactions involve people showing their "best side" to each other. This unfortunately can have the unintended consequence of each person feeling either inferior or superior to the other due to "comparing your inside with other peoples' outside." The essence of spirituality is to be found in the imperfection of human beings, not in some imagined ideal way of living a life that can never be reached.

In conclusion, I'm not proposing that excellence isn't a very worthy goal. For example, I take great satisfaction in providing a consistent degree of excellence in my therapeutic work with each of my clients. My goal here is simply to introduce some useful ideas for balancing the desire to achieve perfection without proper regard to the cost involved. To once again borrow from the wisdom of 12-step groups, often the sanest and ultimately "best" course of action can be summed up in three simple words:

"Easy Does It!"

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