here are a couple of events from the day:
In thinking about some problem at work I came up with this profundity:
Don't confuse perfection with excellence. They are very different and (if you didn't realize it!), its excellence you should strive for, not perfection.
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An ex-colleague has a very good blog, with a particularly funny posting about dealing with Japanese customers:
http://alice-in-wanderland.blogspot.com/2006/05/americans-are-from-mars-japanese-are.html
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PS: Palls, the block is not so much from not having material to write about, as not having the time, mindspace and also the enthu to blog.
5 comments:
I am not sure what you mean by excellence vs perfection.
Webster defines excellence as being "very good of its kind."
Perfection is the state of being in correspondance "with an ideal standard or abstract concept", according to the same source.
In the context of your work, lets take the task of "writing an excellent program" versus "writing a perfect program". How would the two differ? I find it hard to satisfyingly answer these two questions because any properties that you ascribe to excellence (get the job done on time and make it error free) can be made part of the defining ideal standard for perfection.
For our benefit, please explain your insight carefully, so that we may also derive some joy from your moment of sartori.
Arvind
the rajni craze in japan is very interesting. here is a picture.
http://bbthots.blogspot.com/2005/11/chikubuku-chikubuku-rajni.html
these japanese are crazy.
I don't think that the properties that you ascribe to excellence can be transferred to perfection. Perfection is necessarily one-dimensional or atleast low-dimensional. A perfect program does what its supposed to be doing perfectly, but it doesn't get written on time and it doesn't imply not pissing off your colleagues and working well in a team in its writing. I can write more in this vein, but the above summarizes quite well.
We are here in the realm of playing with the meanings of words. I might be wrong in the meaning but what I am talking about really is state of mind: the state of mind that aims for excellence and perfection (as I have defined them). I believe the general usage corresponds quite well with what I have taken them to mean.
PS: Pirsig's comments on the greek concept of 'arete', which he translates as being closest to 'excellence' are along the same lines.
In the literal sense - perfection seems one step higher than excellence. It was an excellent program vs it was a perfect program.
However, perfectionism is generally considered not a good thing in many work-places. For all the reasons that Babu discussed.
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