Best Is The Enemy Of Good Enough

This post is sort of a progression of my recent post “The Economy of Everything” where I talk about making choices about how to use time and money. Most of us have probably heard the phrase I used as the title to this post ‘best is the enemy of good enough.’ What it means is that we can, in our search for the perfect answer or solution get a sort of paralysis and miss out on an answer that is completely sufficient. Another way to say it is, better a good answer right now than a perfect one in the future.

Like most things this is a trade off. The trick is to know if you are making a good trade or not. That is what I want to talk about today.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what best is. Best would be the perfect plan or gadget or completely mastering a skill or craft. Now figuring out what good enough is can be more problematic.  This is going to make the bulk of today’s post.

To me good enough would typically have most of the traits of best but be significantly easier to execute or obtain. Meaning it takes less time, money or effort to execute than the best solution but has most of its characteristics. Typically I would move towards the best solution incrementally until I was close to it in characteristics then go until I hit a noticeable point of diminished returns. At some point the increased payout stops being worth the return.  Example, one might decide that a Daniels Defense rifle is the best solution out there but a Bushmaster will do most of what the DD rifle does for much less money.

I think the combination of characteristics and cost which is used to informally figure when that point of diminished returns is hit can vary by individual. Mostly the cost, characteristics are more objective. The time and energy one person needs to acquire or maintain a capability may vary significantly from another. Some folks can work out 3 times a week and be in good shape and others can’t.

 Also the relative cost is different. One of my single co workers might be able to spend 2 hours every evening at the gym learning boxing or just getting into stupidly good shape. I have a wife and kid so I plan three 45 minute gym sessions and try to do them at lunch. Would I be in better shape if I worked out for 2 hours every evening, sure (overtraining and efficiency are another post) but the cost is too high for me so I make do with less time.

I do think it is worth remembering that characteristics are a significant part of this trade off and not just cost. Otherwise it can get silly and you miss the point. This has been used to justify definitely sub optimal equipment, bad training plans, lack of physical fitness and probably some other stuff. A Mosin Nagant is a good rifle for what it (not a good rifle 80 years ago) is but it is not a semi automatic rifle with detachable magazines. Even though it is cheap there is a definite limit to what dinking around with your buddies at the public range will do for your skill development. Doing a few pushups and sit-ups now and then will not give you the strength that lifting free weights will and walking is at best a sub optimal substitute for running or rucking. When cost is your only consideration the answers usually suck.  I think common sense needs to be present to keep these tradeoffs realistic.

Thoughts?