I hear again and again: “Do sports”, “You have to write a book!” or “You should post articles!” But what do I start with? And above all, how do I start? We learn from school that mistakes are not a good thing. At work, we try to be “perfect”. But how can we become good at something if we don’t start?
Besides, isn’t it better to have something that isn’t perfect than to have nothing at all?
A speech is never perfect. A dancing couple that wins a competition is not perfect either. It’s just better than the other dancing couples at that moment. But that has nothing to do with perfect. A pianist will never be able to play the same piece in exactly the same way and a dancer will never dance half a right turn in a slow waltz in exactly the same way. It’s different every time and that’s a good thing. We are not machines.
But it’s the same with machines. It has to be readjusted and optimized every time. If there is a disturbance or an unforeseeable event, there will also be errors here. A system, especially in special machine construction, will never leave the factory perfect. Individual settings are only optimized again during commissioning and sometimes the software still needs to be adapted.
Let’s take a look at our smartphone. Is the operating system or the individual apps perfect? No, not at all. It’s getting better and better, but there are still problems here and there. What do the manufacturers do? They send out software updates and patches.
But in art, there are perfect masterpieces. Are you sure? The artist is often not satisfied with his result and optimizes it again. When I was on vacation in Paris this summer, I visited a museum with masterpieces by Salvatore Dali. Here, we could see that he sketched and improved the pictures again and again. There was rarely just one version of a painting or sculpture.
Nothing is perfect and never will be. This post is not perfect either. Lukas, a friend of Toastmasters, said it’s important to start simple. The quality doesn’t start until the 30th post. Besides, your post won’t be read at the beginning anyway. It is only important to start.