Originally published 2009

You would imagine getting something done, rather than perfect, wouldn’t be great advice. After all…

‘Nothing is more satisfying than a job well done’

and

‘if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing right‘,

Sometimes you just have to be pragmatic, however, as there isn’t enough time to do everything perfectly, and actually doing it perfectly might be bad! Which leads me to my saying of the moment…

‘Don’t do things right, do the right things.’

I’ve had a few arguments with people about this saying. They just won’t accept that sometimes it is better to do something badly (which makes me wonder if they’ve got too much time on their hands and have never had to prioritise it).

Surely the problem with doing a good (or right) job is how are you defining the job, and from that where its value (or rightness) derives. Is your job just doing that one thing or is it making sure ten things happen and prioritising to get the most value out of them. Is getting one thing right just distracting from the bigger picture and the bigger goals.

Put simply, I could write fantastic proses but have no one see them, or like so many online, barely string a grammatically correct sentence together but write something that strikes a topical note and goes viral.

Obviously ideally we want to do both but where you can’t, think ‘right things’ before ‘things right’.