Opposites are funny things. When I was a kid, I was an avid comic book reader. My favorite back then was Superman. A number of the Superman plotlines revolved around someone called “Bizzaro Superman” who lived on Bizzaro Earth, as I recall. There, everything was backwards. When Bizzaro Superman came to (our) Earth, he did everything backwards, at least from our point of view. (Stay with me…this is going somewhere.)
The problem is that sometimes opposite and backwards are two completely different concepts. The opposite of open is close. The opposite of dark is light. If you wanted to do something “backwards” you’d enter a room and turn off the light, and turn it on when you leave. However, consider the concept of “love.” The opposite of love isn’t hate – it’s indifference. If I love something, that means I care passionately about it. If I hate it, the same is true (different emotion – same intensity). If I stop loving something, I simply cease to care…therfore the opposite of love is indifference.
That brings us to the concept of good.
While in the moral sense, the opposite of good is indeed evil, in a creative sense, the opposite of good is good enough. It also follows that good is the mortal enemy of great.
Over the course of my professional career, I’ve had the opportunity to work for a number of companies, and I’ve had a number of bosses. Some were easy to work for. Some not. The places where I flourished all had one thing in common. They all strove for “great,” and were never satisfied with “good” or “good enough.” The places that I felt like a wage slave all worshiped at the altar of “good enough” or “mediocre.”
I’m here to tell you, oh faithful reader, that “good enough” is never good enough, nor is it good – for you, for your career, or for your company’s well-being. While I’m aware that sometimes, you’ve just gotta say “ship it!” and may not reach the target of perfection, the difference in your existance is if you TRY to make it as good as you can, within the time/talent/resources/parameters you have to work within.
Case in point: I once worked for a guy who gave me an assignment…to write, direct, and produce a TV commercial. I did it, and created something that was radically different (and better) than any spot the agency had ever done for that client. The client loved it. The audience loved it, and voted with their feet – traffic went way up after the spot aired, and it was talked about for months after it went off the air. My bosses reaction (and I’m NOT making this up): “NOW you’ve done it…now all our clients will expect commercials this good!” He was not a happy camper, because he realized that by creating a really good TV commercial, the clients would all realize they could have something better than what they’d gotten before, and would want “better” all the time. I was flabbergasted…after all, it took no longer to do it “better” than it had to do it the same way everything had been done before. (One guess as to why I’m no longer working there.)
The key to life is to always try to do things better this time than you did last time…to strive for great, even if you never quite get to perfect. Master this idea, and you’ll love going to work in the morning. Ignore it, and you’ll not only hate your job, you’ll eventually hate yourself.
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