High Standards are the Enemy of Getting Started

Well, it has been quite many weeks or even months since the last time I wrote something to practice English. The short explanation is, of course, that I have been busy. A longer explanation, however, also points out that having high standards is a major factor delaying my writing plan as well.

Before, when I wrote something, I always wanted to have not only some ideas to write about, but also sufficient time to write and revise. Time was an essential element in this process, because it allowed me to play with the ideas, to vary the structure and the sentences, and to choose the words in order to express those ideas in a way I liked. If time was limited or even not enough, I knew that I could not produce something good and therefore I would end up not even getting started. Although it is usually considered good to have high standards, but in this particular case it is obviously bad to simply stop trying in the name of high standards.

Now I think a much better approach is to write something down whenever I have some ideas. If the time is limited, just jog down the basic ideas in some brief notes. Or, if there is a little more time, try to write down the first draft. I can always go back to those notes and drafts and expand them into some passages later on. This way, I can still keep my high standards and in the same time these high standards will not impede my practice. Well, I am actually trying it out with this piece.

By the way, although the sentence "High standards are the enemy of getting started" is mine, the idea and inspiration actually came from Jim Collins. In his book "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't", he uses the sentence "Good is the enemy of great" as the title of the first chapter. Simply put, the fact that many companies are good make the people of these companies complacent and consequently most of them end up being merely good companies instead of great companies. While browsing through this book in a library, I realized the similar problem between my high standards and my less-than-desired writing frequency. So I came up with this sentence. The purpose is not to steal Jim Collins' idea, but to encourage myself to write more frequently, even when there is not enough time. I am quite confident that this approach will pay off after some time.

2010.10.16