Striving for perfection is the opposite of operating perfectly. Getting to 100% has a cost disproportionate to the added value – 80% is usually more than enough.
Look around at what you do. How often does something new get released that can answer every single question around it with perfection? There are always grey areas that can’t be known before you hit the start button. Trying to know everything before you hit go only adds time and doesn’t really reduce risk much.
Most people try to get to perfect in order to mitigate their concept of risk. Surely the more they know, the less risk they have. The problem is that this assumes you can know everything you need to know. It’s simply not possible. Experience in the real world always leads to new and unexpected knowledge.
The reality is, even Pareto saw this trend of 80/20 in populations, decisions, and groups of highly generalized things. 20% of your time generates 80% of your profits. 80% of your time is occupied by only 20% of the things you need to work on.
Are you spending your time right?