We’re so obsessed with perfection. It’s a word that gets thrown around like a golden ticket to success. “Be perfect. Do perfect work.” The problem is, nobody teaches you what that even means. And the opposite—mediocrity—is treated like a dirty word.
But I’m starting to think mediocrity is the most important skill nobody ever taught us.
If you’re a perfectionist, you know the drill. You spend five hours on a two-hour task. You obsess over every tiny detail, every comma, every word. The final product might be beautiful, but what did it cost you? Your time? Your sanity? And more importantly, was it even needed?
That’s where the trap lies. You pour your heart and soul into a perfect solution for a problem that only needed a decent one. And then you get frustrated because nobody notices your flawless work. The truth is, they weren’t looking for perfection in the first place.
I’ve seen it happen. The genius programmer who delivers a perfectly optimized, bug-free piece of code for a simple internal tool. The rest of the team just needed something that worked, something they could use quickly. They don’t see the elegance; they just see the delay. And the perfectionist feels alienated, misunderstood. They don’t realize they’re in a race no one else is running.
Sometimes, a “good enough” job is the right job.
And this is especially true if you’re trying to fit into a large system, an organization, a team. You can’t be a star performer if you can’t even get on the stage. You need to learn how to be a part of the pyramid before you can even think about rising to the top.
Mediocrity helps you do that. It lets you learn to collaborate. It forces you to get comfortable with ‘good enough’ and to move on. Once you can do that, once you can be a reliable part of the machine, that’s when your moments of brilliance truly stand out. That’s when your perfection becomes an asset, not a liability.
Perfection is not a default setting for every part of your life. It’s like using a screwdriver to fix a screw but trying to make the screwdriver itself perfect, while the other screws are waiting. You’re so busy perfecting the tool that you never fix the problem.
So, if you’re a perfectionist, try to be mediocre today. Just for a little while. Do a task well, but not perfectly. Realize that the world doesn’t end, your boss doesn’t fire you, and your colleagues don’t hate you.
The ability to choose mediocrity when the situation demands it isn’t a sign of laziness. It’s a sign of wisdom. It’s a quiet superpower. And it’s how you actually get ahead.
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