Good enough for now
There's a principle in design thinking that my career coach, David Warren, taught me last week, which I've been thinking about ever since. It's called the "Principle of Good Enough." The premise is simple. Instead of reaching the "ta-da!" final version before sharing or moving forward, you get to the "good enough for now" point and get it out in the world to test it and then design/perfect further based on real user feedback.
Such a simple idea should be easy, but it's really not. I'd argue that it's actually easier to keep tweaking. It takes a lot of courage to say, "You know what? I'm going to go ahead and let this out there in its imperfect state, and then let feedback guide the next revisions."
That doesn’t mean we just put junk out there or spew unfounded ideas. “Good enough for now” means we’ve done as much work as we can with what we have, and now we’re ready to make it even better with experience and feedback. The idea is to put it out there at the best level we can — acknowledging its imperfect state — and invite notes from others.
In our filter-heavy, perfection-centric digital world. let's be the ones who have the courage to let "good enough for now" be a commonly-used phrase in our verbal toolkit. Let's give each other the grace to be in a constant state of revision so we can take input from each other, rather than battling over our final conclusions. Let's use it in our relationships, where we know there are areas for improvement but we're willing to let interactions live in draft form so we can improve them together.
Most powerfully of all, let's take our "good enough for now" and bring it to the only One, Jesus Christ, who can take what we've done and perfect it through the power of His atoning sacrifice. We can invite Him to be the author and finisher of our stories.
