Do It Well, Do It Poorly, Is It Worth Doing?

In the summer of 2020, I tried to start my first business. It was an online science and mathematics tutoring company for high school students. I hired four brilliant and friendly peers with strong communication skills. After building a website and training the tutors, my employees led social media, marketing, and advertising campaigns. The five of us lived across four states, allowing each of us to establish unique professional contacts with professors, high school teachers, and principals. The company was sanctioned and advertised by two universities. Despite being run by 21-year-olds, it was highly professional in both operation and appearance. We had poured our hearts into this business, and I was truly proud.

We received one customer; a free consult. After more than six months of work, I was out of money, time, and energy. It was humiliating. The failure had been wildly expensive and spectacularly public. When the failed business came up in conversation, my cheeks would catch fire and my eyes would attempt to douse the flames.

I had often heard (and believed) the adage, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well”. As I began to recover from the embarrassment, I saw the value in all that I had learned. Truly, it was worth more than any money I could have made by having customers. This endeavor was not worth doing unless I did it well, because simply calling up a few prospective tutees for a freelance opportunity wouldn’t have taught me anything at all. By building websites, training employees, and researching the legal groundwork of taxes and liabilities, I developed an invaluable sense of what a small business requires.

But not all things need to be done well. If we are honest with ourselves, most tasks can be done quite poorly with minimal consequences. Oftentimes, we treat errands and endeavors with the mindset that “[we] get out of it what [we] put into it”, but with a moment’s pause we can see that this is clearly not the case. The 80/20 phenomenon is almost universal; eighty percent of effects derive from twenty percent of causes [1].

Twenty percent of the homework problems I do will result in eighty percent of the understanding I gain from homework. Twenty percent of the clothes in my closet will be worn eighty percent of the time. Twenty percent of the time I spend in someone’s presence will result in eighty percent of the deep connections we have.

It is time to let go of our pithy phrases and to assess our undertakings with a more critical and exacting eye. Not every equal effort contributed will result in an equal pay out. Some things are worth doing well; other things are simply worth doing. In order to accomplish more while bringing less to the table, it is important to be clear about the definition success.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell asserts that it is necessary to engage in 10,000 practice hours in order to become a leading expert in a field or discipline [2]. While there are many environmental circumstances to consider, innate talent cannot compensate for a lack of grit and dedication. The demoralizing force of stagnation is not to be dismissed, but the size of this commitment should not be cause for despair. Within very short periods of time there is plenty of room for accomplishment, and visible improvement often provides the impetus to continue pursuing an objective. 

Ill-defined goals are not particularly effective at improving skills efficiently. I believe this is because many endeavors require highly specific skills that do not technically overlap despite being a part of the “final whole”. For example, I am learning to draw digital art in Adobe Illustrator. The “final whole” would be beautiful art, created at a respectable pace. However, to achieve this I need several smaller skills. Knowing how to draw proper proportions is an entirely different skill than knowing the software’s brush tools. Both of these skills are entirely different than knowing how light behaves, which also happens to be entirely different from shading with a digital pen.

By focusing deeply on a very limited scope of objectives, I was able to improve my Adobe Illustrator skills to a presentable stage within a very reasonable timeframe. At first, I didn’t bother learning hand control. I learned the software’s tools and abilities. I spent a long time tracing images so I could focus on mastering coloring and shading. I transitioned from the trackpad to a graphical drawing tablet. Each objective was isolated and there was massive improvement in the specific focus. Of course, transitioning away from tracing meant that my images became dramatically worse for a time, and the same thing happened when I transitioned to a graphic tablet. These moments weren’t discouraging, however, since I knew that the images were only bad for one reason at a time. I couldn’t criticize myself for failing at the “final whole” because each transition was the start of an entirely new sub-skill.

Practice can be made better and less wasteful. It may take a bit of energy to determine how this may be accomplished, but the return on investment is thrilling. For those things we have to (or perhaps choose to) do in life, it is important that we guard ourselves against both perfectionism and apathy. Do some things brilliantly, do other things to the degree that they must be done, and allow yourself to let go of the vast majority of things which make very little difference indeed.

References:

[1] Koch, Richard. 2018. The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less. Currency

[2] Gladwell, Malcolm. 2019. Outliers: The story of success. Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company