Sufficiency > Perfectionism

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By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 6 mins


Summary: Most things in the world do not have a ‘ceiling’, meaning you can never not improve further. For ceilingless places, perfection is not attainable. As such you need to stop somewhere as ‘enough’, I normally refer to the line you stop as ‘sufficiency’.


Ceilingless Vs Ceilings

  • Some places do have a ceiling. 

    • Eg do you properly administer the vaccine, you can’t 140% administer the vaccine. Eg is the water drinkable, you can’t have 140% drinkable water. 

  • For ceilingless places you can’t ever reach ‘perfection’. 

    • Examples of ceilingless places:

      • 1. How good a book can be. 

      • 2. How to make the best coffee. 

      • 3. How to best teach maths. 

      • 4. How to be a friend. 

      • 5. How to best help the common good. 


Sufficiency vs Perfectionism

  • Perfectionism = striving for something to be as good as possible, but perfectionism can be a concept that when what you are working on is ceilingless, can mean you strive for an infinite amount of time

  • Sufficiency = When something meets realistic criteria in order to get a ‘Job To Be Done’ done


Lines of sufficiency

  • The line of sufficiency is the point at which you cross where all criteria are fulfilled for your Job To Be Done. 

    • This can be somewhat subjective, but it is important to try define what your line of sufficiency is so you know when you have reached it.

  • A non-exhaustive (aka sufficient :p) list of sufficiencies:

    • L1: done. 

    • L2: best effort in a time frame, 

      • eg whatever you can get done in 5 hours. 

    • L3: a number, 

      • eg. 100% for factual correctness. 

      • eg. Some people say ‘Ps get degrees’ and are going at 50%+ for university exam results. 

    • L4: new high water mark. 

      • eg As soon as you believe you are the new high water mark, stop and move onto the next thing. 

    • L5: new high water mark by an instantly recognisable irrefutable dealmaker

  • I’ve found that often ‘perfection’ can be the default goal. 

    • For places that don’t have a ceiling, perfection is never attainable so obviously this is counter productive. 

    • Either everything is equally important, or everything isn’t equally important. 

      • IMO everything isn’t equally important. So spend more effort on the important things. 

      • Rearticulation 1: the line of sufficiency for very important things should be higher than for less important things. 

      • Rearticulation 2: Not everything needs to be perfect / the new high water mark, so investing the energy to get to perfection / new high water mark has an opportunity cost (ie robs you of the time to spend elsewhere). 

      • For some things good enough is enough, for other things you want the best in the world! 



“Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Winston Churchill

  • For ceilingless places, you can keep improving forever, but we don’t have infinite time, you have to stop somewhere. 

    • For Edrolo resources, the line of sufficiency is to aim to be the ‘new high water mark’ for all core areas. Eg the new high water mark for theory, activities, questions and answers. 

    • Education resources are ceilingless - there is no such thing as the perfect lesson, content can be improved endlessly.

    • We don’t want to bring to market a resource we don’t deeply believe is the new high water mark for all core areas… but we have to stop somewhere. 

    • A resource that takes longer to get to market helps less people and means we have less time to build other new products

    • However, there are places within our resources which have a ceiling in making a resource however, eg 100% factual correctness. Of course for factual correctness Edrolo’s aim is 100% factual correctness and we try extraordinarily hard to do this. 

  • An equation for how to improve the world:

    • Lens 1: Improvement to the world = 1. How much better your solution is * 2. How many people use your solution

      • If you increase “1. How much better your solution is” by taking much longer to build the resource, then “2. How many people use your solution” might overall decrease the amount of net improvement to the world. 

    • Lens 2: Improvement to the world = 1. How many solutions you are able to implement * 2. How many people  use your solutions

      • The more time you have to make solutions, the more solutions you can make

      • The more solutions you implement, the more problems that are solved

      • If you spend too much time on one solution, the opportunity cost could be many other problems left unsolved

  • I think the aim at Edrolo should be to try and utilize the resources we have (i.e cash, people and time) to achieve as much high quality improvement to education as we possibly can

    • This means that we firstly optimize to have the best solution (new high water mark) and secondly we solve as many problems with the resources we have at our disposal

    • Optimizing for sufficiency = stopping at a reasonable point so you can solve the next problem


Examples of how to apply sufficiency > perfectionism at Edrolo

  • Authoring a lesson

    • Perfectionism = Spending 5x the average time of other Edrolo authors due to wordsmithing every sentence to be as articulate as possible

    • Sufficiency = Content is a new high water mark, no factual errors, meets writing conventions/tone and aligned to recipe 

  • Recording a video solution

    • Perfectionism = No errors in any of the presented audio, perfectly done in one take

    • Sufficiency = Allow for natural pauses, um, ahhs etc

  • Creating a visual asset 

    • Perfectionism = Super detailed illustration that looks realistic

    • Sufficiency = Abstract illustration that makes sure the core concept comes across

  • Creating a recipe for a new product

    • Perfectionism = Spending 5 years finessing details of a recipe before bringing it to market so you are 100% confident in every decision

    • Sufficiency = spending several months creating a recipe to the point you are highly highly confident that the resource will be the new high water mark for all core areas. 



Serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

  • God grant me the serenity to accept that for some things done is good enough, courage to work at some things until they are the best in the world, and the wisdom to know the difference. 

  • For many tasks I work on with others, before we start we’ll try to together define ‘the line of sufficiency’. For better or worse I think almost everything has a line of sufficiency. Not defining sufficiency is often a path to wasting time, spending too little time or spending too much time. 

  • It’s unlikely you can be the best at everything in the world, but I hope you are aiming to be the best at atleast a few things. 

  • In this way, I think sufficiency actually is a core strategy to be able to be the best at some things. 

  • Jingle: Learning about sufficiency sufficiently allows one to fight ‘negative sum perfectionism’ and thereby (hopefully) be the best (at something)! 

  • OR: Sufficiency > Perfectionism.