The Imperfectionist: Seventy per cent

Trying easy will help you in any area of your life. Conventional Wisdom tells us we have to give no less than 110 percent to keep ahead. Yet conversely, I have found that giving 90 percent is usually more effective.”

Remember, mainstreamers want “good enough, quickly;” experts want “perfect in as long as it takes.”

In the long-run it is probably most effective to work on the strategy that seems to deliver the best results about 80 to 90 percent of the time and keep exploring with the remaining 10 to 20 percent. Google famously asks employees to spend 80 percent of the workweek on their official job and 20 percent on projects of their choice, which has led to

Today we take it all for granted. FedEx actually does deliver more than 99 percent of its packages on time. Cars don’t spontaneously break. Makeup doesn’t often cause blindness. Your web browser rarely crashes, the electricity almost never goes out, and air travel has never been safer. And yet we still talk about being very good at our craft as if