"Done is better than perfect" - Question for you all
 

I have a problem (understatement of the year)... When it comes to projects I tend to get myself into a feedback loop of wanting to make sure everything is "right" or "perfect" before I move on. This often causes me to never start a project, lose interest part way, or just never finish anything. Good example is living with a half-finished bathroom renovation for 3 years. I finished it the week my wife and I moved out of the house, so that the renters we had taking over the place would have a complete bathroom.

Currently I am working on the interior of the Porsche. What it truly needs is a decent clean, a few small issues resolved, and the remaining RS carpet stuck down. That is it. Done.

Where my mind goes though is...

In order to do it "perfectly" I need to remove the chipping sound deadening, clean and scrape all the glue remnants off the floor, weld up a couple of holes in the floor, figure out an undercoat patch on the bottom of the car where I welded, paint the welds (which will make everything else look crappy, so paint the whole inside, put in new sound deadening, re-lay the half-assed carpet, replace all the rubber seals, address the tears in the seat....the list goes on and on.

So what I end up doing is nothing. It is as if I cannot get myself to do the thing it really needs, which is finish the carpet install. I get stuck in this never ending feedback loop of not being able to tackle it 100% right now, so I do nothing, and I drive it around with a half installed carpet kit and some old rubber floor mats over the bare metal in the front half of the car.

I don't have the time or the financial means to do anything perfect ever. I need to figure out how to live with "good enough" and just enjoy the damn thing instead of always planning for something and never actually doing it. How do you guys overcome this? Is "done" actually better than "perfect?" Will I get more enjoyment out of the car knowing that there are glue boogers left under the freshly installed carpet, but because there is carpet there I will be happier?

The following pictures show where I got the carpet install in 2013 when I sold the car. I bought the car back this summer, and apparently the guy who owned it felt the same way, or didn't want to take the time to finish the project...You can see the no-carpet-front with designer floor mats, haha.

What do you guys do to get over the need to make things perfect before just moving on?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1448906728.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1448906832.jpg

Run out of time, energy, or money. :D

Welcome to the club. I've had the same problem for as long as I can remember. The older I get done is better(in certain instances).

the enemy of "good" is "great".

i can derail a project in my own mind better than anyone.

Don't let perfect become the enemy of good enough.

That was a saying that a former boss of mine was fond of, it has always stuck with me. The funny thing about perfect is that it does not exist. Something can ALWAYS be done better. Eternally seeking perfection is striving for something that is impossible.

Fix what needs fixing. But I sure would not remove sound deadening that didn't need removing. I sure don't go looking for trouble.

And I always complete a project in a resonable period of time.

I like it. A lot of truth in that statement.

If the holes in the floor are letting water from the leaks in the window seals drain out the bottom. Leave the holes in the floor.

If the windows are leaking, you are pretty much screwed, so enjoy life and ignore the holes in the floor, but acknowledge this and don't ruin the carpets by reinstalling them.

If the holes in the floor are NOT related to leaking windows, wait until the windows leak, the sills rot out, and THEN fix everything at once. This will also provide adequate time to let the rockers rot out, so everything will get done at once!

Whatever you do- do not jeapordize the carpets.

Hope this helps.:D
Ron

It's a flawed human being who thinks like that....

My name is KC and I am flawed :D

Hi KC, I'm Jeff, can I join this club?

the Cult of Done
 

I am as prone to this as anyone here (with bicycles as well as with cars), but I have a copy of this printed out at home to refer to as needed:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1448917825.jpg

Perfect is different for everyone. It will never be perfect. Make yourself happy, make 'em wonder what you're up to...

This. See my Corvair restoration thread....my OCD at it's best.

Perfection is a cruel mistress and the highest form of self-abuse.

Scott, My personal opinion is that if you would just get cracking on it, and stop thinking about it, you could have already gotten the floor stripped in the areas where it was coming up, and could have pretty much prepped for the rust repairs as well. Do what you need to do, or do what you want to do. Quicker you figure it out, the sooner you will get started, and the sooner you will be done.

Less thinking, more doing. I hate holes myself. If I am not going to do a proper job, I will do something that won't be hard to undo later.




When I was a kid, we would plate a rust hole, pop rivets and caulk. Put a dolly on the rivets, pound the back side flat, seam seal and spray bomb. Don't laugh, they can turn out nicely.

OTOH, I broke out the welder yesterday and fixed the front pipe on my wife's muffler with new steel and a couple of reinforcing struts. Not stock but stout. Cut back the tail pipe while I was at it, because it looked like it was dragging on the entrance to the driveway, and straining the joint where it failed. Wasn't planning on doing that, but now it is done.

Wasn't planning on doing my Mom's kitchen roof over Thanksgiving, but she mentioned it was leaking, (... when I drove 7 hours to drop off a car that I got for her on short notice, when hers died suddenly a few weeks ago). Picked up materials for the roof and started Thanksgiving morning. Dinner wasn't until 6 anyway, and it was absolutely going to rain on Saturday. It's done now. Scoped out a couple of other projects her house will need some time in the near future. No, I wasn't planning on it, but...

Do you see where I am going with this ? Do or not do.

When are we starting ???? :)

After 11 years in my house. I finally painted the laundry room. It had been on this list forever. It took me 3 hours. 3 hours. This included moving the machines and sink and cleaning up a bit. Last step is to install the tile by the sink. It's been on a shelf in the garage for probably 5 years. It'll be done befor the year is out.

Assembler's Malaise.


This disease, which resembles procrastination, occurs when the
assembler's standards exceed the assembler's perceived skill level,
ie. "I can't do the job as well as it should be done." So nothing
gets done.

There are a couple remedies for Assembler's Malaise:
1. Farm out the job to professionals. Pride and budget constraints often
prohibit this.
2. Lower your standards. This is tough to do but a bit easier with an MG
than an Aston Martin. One of the lessons of restoring my MG-TC was
realizing how poorly the bodies were originally assembled. Usually the
two sides didn't match but I wanted them to!
3. Group therapy: ask some friends to help get the job going again.

The worst possible manifestation of this disease is a long period of
inactivity followed by selling the project - usually at a big loss.

Fortunately, subscribers to this list seem to be Can-Do types who are
not likely to be afflicted with Asembler's Malaise. We're the ones who
track down and buy the rare old Something-or-other which has been
apart in some barn for years - and we get it back together again!

George - about to begin restoration #4 - Haynes

http://www.jag-lovers.org/saloons/disease.html

A good suggestion- however- if you employ #3, beware of the "too many chiefs..." trap.

You invite your friends to come and help. They do- and offer 20 different suggestions on the "proper" way to do it, none of which you want.

You get frustrated because their ideas suck.
They get frustrated because you were the one asking for help and you s$%^ all over their suggestions.

This is why I have no friends! SmileWavy

I like "Do or Do Not, there is no "try" and "Do something, even if its wrong"

I am the king of "Good Enough". My good enough is generally pretty damned good, but it isn't always perfect. I like stuff I can drive, enjoy. That means my Kustoms don't get finished, smoothed firewalls and engine bays. I appreciate the work, but I personally think its a waste of time if you hardly every open the hood to show anybody.
For the OP, I agree, fix the ugly. Patch the holes. Forget about removing the deadener. Buy a spray hopper and Als Liner from Amazon. Spray the floor. It works. It looks awesome too. It hides ugly. You can do it with bedliner also. Put the carpets back in and get on with it.
I also find that a whiteboard in the garage with a big ugly list helps. As I cross stuff off, I feel good. Sometimes I will just take a day and knock out all the little crap just to make the list smaller...

And then there is Wabi-Sabi

Nothing is Finished.
Nothing is Perfect.
Nothing Last.

I appreciate all of the advice and answers that have been given. As to the question of "when do we start?" I kind of already have...

Over the long holiday weekend I removed the Recaro seats, tore them completely down, steamed the compressed foam, hand washed the covers a bunch of times with oxi-clean (amazing stuff for removing dirt from upholstery), and fixed one of the crushed bolsters with additional foam. Two of the bolster covers are going to a vinyl repair place tomorrow for a quote to see about fixing the holes. (As an aside, I have disassembled an corrected a few sets of Recaro seats now, so this part of the interior project will be done in short order).

I am stopping by the fabric store tonight to get some spray glue. My idea is to break this down into easily digestible segments.

1. Complete seats, and set aside in the basement. (nearly done)
2. Clean the floors with soapy water, and maybe a little solvent remover. (before the weekend)
3. Replace entirely gone floor deadener material with some inexpensive butyl product. (weekend project)
4. Install carpet. Install seats. (next week after work)
5. Stand back and realize that it probably wasn't as much work as I have worked it up to be.

I am going to use this post as my accountability meter. Feel free to hold me to the fire with all of this. I will post pics of the seat progress tonight when I get home.

I wrote this recently, about a single repair, and not a project or restoration.
It was in reference to people who let project cars rot away.
There may be some relationship to the OCD analysis paralysis perfectionism denialism you describe:

I’m increasingly fascinated at the psychology resulting in one's car just rotting away in your garage or yard for years.
In fact, exposure to these actions on the forums (time and again) has made me more self-aware of this pull of human nature.
eg: A car has some $300 problem, gets parked by owner, "for now”, and proceeds to decay into oblivion over the next 10-20 years.

Here is my new personal flowchart for owning any car, once it’s got an issue, and you’ve parked it, until you “fix it”....

1) If you want to fix it yourself, kudos.

2) If you have not fixed it within 3 months, then you:
a) Are unqualified to fix it.
b) Too lazy to fix it.
c) Do not have time to fix it.
--> Take it to a pro.

If you can’t afford to take it to a pro, then you can not afford the car.
--> Sell the car.

Bottom line: If the car ain’t fixed in 3.5 months, sell the car.


This flowchart also enforces a cap on how many cars you can own.
The impulsive types love the thrill of the hunt, but then are unable to actually follow thru.
They keep piling up new projects while not getting any of the old ones finished.
This is how you end up with a Jalopnik featured auto graveyard when you die.

To that end, just this week, I made two appointments to service 2 of my cars, just to not be this guy.
Both cars, I failed to fix after two attempts/diagnosis. It felt good to obey my own system of rules above.
One, I happened to fix myself at the last minute, b/c I got lucky. The other, I gladly forked over $250 to get the job done.

Uncle Scott, you might find this reading worthwhile:

How You Make Decisions Says a Lot About How Happy You Are - WSJ

My week of satisficing: Can a maximizer every really change?

Key is not to rip into something if you don't have the stamina to finish in reasonable time. I have made this mistake before. But when I do, I don't sweat it. Cars can be sitting and as long as you have them in a garage, what's a few months? I want to enjoy my car hobby and if I don't have the time or the money, I'll do it later. I have family, train dogs, hunt - all these activities are time sensitive. The car hobby has an open schedule for me.

G

This tread reminds of an editorial I wrote a while back


People tell me about their half-finished projects and how frustrated they are about not completing them. I envy these people. I consider myself lucky if I get a project all the way to the halfway point before I get distracted. Most of my projects get just past the stage where I buy all the tools and materials I need before something else catches my eye. I have two garages and a basement full of paint, construction material, car parts, truck parts—you name it. I painted one of my cars in 1980, and I still haven’t reinstalled the windshield wipers.
Vintage Truck readers come up to me at shows and ask if my Dodge WD-15 is finished. They are always smiling when they ask this—like they know the answer and just want to hear me say it. My best answer, of course, is to hedge around the question and mention that it’s drivable. What I don’t say is that, as with all of my projects, it is not now, nor will it ever, be finished.
A few years ago, the younger staff here told me—much to my annoyance—that you cannot exist in the modern world without a Facebook page, and if I didn’t want to get left in the dust of history, I had better set one up. It’s supposed to be easy to set up the account, and I suppose it is for people who really want to do it. I did manage to get a Facebook page up and working, but, as usual, I lost interest. It languished until I turned it over to my managing editor to maintain. She actually understands how social media works. Because she keeps it up to date, thousands of people have looked at our page and “Liked” it, shared it, and whatnot. I don’t really care if they "like" it. If there was a “buy him a drink” option I might be more enthusiastic about this.
But now they tell me you cannot exist in the modern world without an Instagram account, too. This time I chose not to gum up the works with my personal involvement and turned it directly over to my more knowledgeable staff. I should have known better.
Instagram uses hashtags (#) to connect you to pictures of similar subjects. By using these hashtags, you can waste hours hopping from one picture to another and find images people have posted that are related to your particular interest. Hashtags are meant to be meaningful and significant; for instance, an appropriate tag for my truck would be #beautifultruck or #magnificent. My staff, however, has a more jaded view of my work and chose to tag my truck with #unfinished, #stillinpieces, and #garagequeen. This just proves that, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, even if you don’t know what you’re doing—or never finish it.

If, in the pursuit of perfect, everything else is lost, then what good is it?

I came up with that one day when my assembly guy was dragging his feet being very, very slow. He's so meticulously perfect that he can only get a few of our items done in a day, while a competitors person can do 60... or more...

Great responses in this thread. The title really grabbed my attention as I've suffered from the same issues myself in a myriad of ways.

One thing i'll offer which may not have been mentioned is that you don't truly learn until you 'complete' a project and look back. once it's complete you are faced with the reality of your work and can no longer mentally dodge the imperfections by telling yourself you'll come back to it and tweak it just so.

BTDT ....down to bare metal, using electric & air powered hand tool sand a large selection of removal bits. I did an area at a time then shot it with self etching primer...sure, it took a while but was a much larger area than you're dealing with....a winter project. Weld up any thru holes .A final 2 coats with single stage Urethane. Standing around with your thumb up your ass will not get it done.
I've got a butt load of pics, but won't waste them on a time waster. Work gets it done.....

I got the seats torn down, cleaned, and put back together. They are nowhere near perfect, but they are done and that is enough for now. There are a couple of places in SLC that I want to get quotes to fix the vinyl jacket covers on the upper bolster of the driver's side. Until then I am happy to have the foam fixed up a bit, and the covers much cleaner than normal. Here are a few pictures of the process.

Covers removed, hand washed and drying
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449209950.jpg

Foams were a bit flat, so I steamed them
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210066.jpg

Put a towel on the foam or you will ruin the pad and iron immediately. Steam brings back a little life to the flattened foams
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210128.jpg

A combination of craft foam, batting, and spray glue props up the bolster foams to fill the lower bolster jackets out.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210243.jpg

Jacket covers back on, ready for the seat bottoms
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210364.jpg

Completed seat bottom
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210434.jpg

Seats are back together. Unfortunately I didn't take any before pictures, but the grey covers are so much cleaner.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1449210478.jpg

Over the weekend I am going to get that carpet install going...expect more to come.

I would like to contribute as I have completed a lot of major restorations in my lifetime, including a 1967 Owens sport-fishing boat (wooden) as well as not finishing a few. I quantify work / tasks like this: The attention to detail, materials and resources should align with what you're working on. Much like writing / forming a business plan, then executing on an appropriate scale.

Example: I would not spend days researching, composing a business plan, wooing potential investors for a lemonade stand start-up at the end of my driveway. Since all here share a commonality of 'gear head-ness' in vehicle terms, our passion (emotion) clouds our judgement. IE: The slippery slope.

A large part of my persona is anal retentive, especially with anything mechanical. I would absolutely do a vintage Porsche with a commitment like that. You are preserving automotive history. A 1980's Chevy Cavalier.......................no. Any type of restoration regardless of scale and complexity is just plain hard, difficult and fiddly work. Most people wildly misjudge the effort, time and money that is required for even the smallest project to be done as nice as it once was when new.

In today's world where everything seems to be resolved in 22 minutes or less on TV - we have less patience than ever before. It is very easy to become discouraged, disinterested.