Perfection

Anyone who has ever met me will know that I’m not perfect.

For a long time, I thought that I had to be perfect in everything. Not only is this unrealistic, it’s like the saying goes perfection can be the enemy of the good.

I haven’t really had a mentor in the UK, it doesn’t seem to be very widespread here, or wasn’t when I was younger. When I lived in the US a mentor-like person saw how I was at the time and told me to be pragmatic. To get stuff done.

Building software there are increasingly more data protection issues to think about, and creating mobile apps there are ever more requirements from App Store and Play Store that have to be met. In the future, the extra things that software engineers have to know will only increase. There will be more laws in different countries and the app stores will continue to change.

I am an all-rounder. I cover infrastructure, backend, frontend, databases and DNS. Anything any of my clients need me to do I can do whether that be video editing, design, or writing copy.

However, is anything I do perfect? Probably not. Definitely not.

I strive to make things as good as I can make them. I learn new stuff. I take advice from others. But, at the same time, I get the thing I’m paid to do done as quickly as I can.

Generally, there might be a way to do something that is relatively quick and easy to live with, or a way that might be a lot better that might take much longer. Instead of assuming, or doing whatever I like, in cases where one method will be quick and dirty and the other might be cleaner but take a long time, I’ll tend to ask what everyone wants me to do. This involves explaining the pros and cons of each method in a simple way without bias.

If it was down to me I would probably want to choose the path that means learning something new or is the latest thing, but what does the person who is paying the money want me to do?

At this point in my life, I feel like I’m getting there with self-acceptance and self-compassion.

I like to communicate as well as I can to let clients know what I am working on, the order of various tasks, and roughly when I’m expecting/hoping different milestones to be reached. This is often not what people want to hear. If each stage of a large project will take a couple of days the entire project could take weeks or months. And there may well be issues somewhere along the line.

My advice to others would be…

• Break large tasks down into smaller chunks
• Give realistic durations for the tasks, albeit you may not know exactly
• Don’t waste a long time down a rabbit hole, recognize where you are at
• Communicate as well as you can
• Manage expectations, be realistic
• Be nice to yourself

If someone is creating some software for you, I think it’s fine to expect to be given frequent updates and if you want specifics about particular issues, you should have everything explained in language you can understand. But also, be empathetic.

In fact, let’s just be nice.