Perfection Can Be Harmful, Says Anne Mollegen Smith

"Done is better than perfect." — Anne Mollegen Smith

This quote probably sounds familiar. It was made by Anne Mollegen Smith, groundbreaking magazine editor and the first female editor-in-chief of Redbook, who delivered this line to her editorial staff in 1980. But beyond the attribution, this episode unpacks why four words have outlasted four decades of motivational content. Perfectionism isn't really about quality — it's about protection. It's the sophisticated human habit of never finishing so nothing can ever fail. We explore why done creates the feedback that perfect was trying to avoid, where the counterpoint actually holds, and what it costs when worthwhile work never leaves the desk. For anyone with something sitting in draft form right now — this one is for you.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Quotive Corner. Today's quote is one you've almost certainly seen before. On a poster, a coffee mug, a motivational slide deck, maybe the wall of a startup office. You probably are curious where it came from. Let's fix that. Done is better than perfect. That's Anne Mulligan Smith, editor, writer, and the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of Red Book Magazine, a position she held starting in 1981. She later led Working Woman Magazine from 1984 to 1989, where she published one of the first major scientific studies on workplace sexual harassment years before the rest of the world caught up to the issue. Now, four words, and somehow they've outlasted most of what was written in those same offices in 1980. Why? Because the problem they address is permanent. Perfectionism, the inability or unwillingness to ship something until it's flawless, has derailed more worthwhile work than almost any other single failure mode. It is not a new problem, it is not a technology problem or a generational problem. It is a human problem, and it has been producing paralysis, delay, and quietly abandoned potential for as long as people have been making things. What makes Smith's formulation so durable is that it doesn't argue against quality, it doesn't say good enough is the goal, or that standards don't matter. It says done is better than perfect, specifically because perfect, in most real world situations, is not actually available. Perfect is a moving target that recedes as you approach it. It is a standard that exists primarily to prevent you from finishing, because finishing requires accepting that the thing is what it is, imperfect, like everything real, and releasing it anyway. The editorial context matters here. Smith was running a magazine. Magazines have deadlines. The article that misses the issue doesn't run at all, not because it wasn't good enough, but because it wasn't done. The perfect piece that arrives after the print date is worth exactly nothing. Done, published, and in front of readers at 90% quality is infinitely more valuable than the theoretical masterpiece that never left the writer's desk. That logic scales well beyond magazine publishing. The business plan that gets revised endlessly and never launched, the creative project that lives in draft form for years because it isn't quite ready. The conversation that keeps getting postponed because the right moment hasn't arrived. The apology that never gets made because the wording isn't perfect yet. In every case, the pursuit of perfect has become the enemy of done. And done is the only version that actually exists in the world, available to be of use to anyone. In a past episode, James Clear gave us the insight that systems determine outcomes, that what you actually do on an ordinary day matters more than what you intend. The perfectionist system, examined honestly, is often one that produces an enormous amount of preparation and a very small amount of output. The hours go into refining what hasn't shipped yet rather than building what comes next. And the gap between the work being done and the work being done well enough to release never quite closes, because the standard keeps adjusting upward to stay just out of reach. There's also a psychological dimension to perfectionism worth naming. The pursuit of the flawless is rarely just about quality. More often, it's about protection. If the thing is never finished, it can never be evaluated. If it's never released, it can never fail. The unpublished novel is still a potential masterpiece. The unlaunched business is still a promising idea. Perfectionism in this sense is a sophisticated form of self-protection, a way of staying in the safe territory of almost without ever having to risk the exposure of actually done. That connects directly to what Freud noticed when he wrote to his fiancee about boldness arriving with a certainty of being loved. That genuine security produces the willingness to act without guarantees. The perfectionist is often operating from the opposite of that security. They need the thing to be invulnerable before they'll expose it, because exposure without invulnerability feels genuinely threatening. And since nothing is ever invulnerable, nothing ever gets released. Recall that Aeschylus told us that wisdom comes alone through suffering. And the companion truth is that skill comes alone through doing. The writer who publishes the imperfect piece and then writes the next one develops faster than the writer who refines the first piece indefinitely. The entrepreneur who launches the imperfect product and iterates in response to real feedback builds something more useful than the one who plans forever in a vacuum. Done creates feedback. Feedback creates improvement. Improvement over time actually approaches the quality that perfectionism was protecting against releasing prematurely. Will Rogers told us to stop digging when you're in a hole. Perfectionism is its own kind of hole. One dug with increasingly refined tools, but a hole nonetheless. The longer you stay in it, the harder it becomes to climb out because the standard for what would justify leaving keeps rising with the time invested. Now, the honest counterpoint because this show doesn't skip it. Done is not always better than perfect. There are contexts where the difference between 90% and 100% is genuinely consequential, where the imperfect version causes harm, fails catastrophically, or permanently forecloses the chance for a better one. A bridge is not a magazine article, a medical diagnosis is not a first draft. A legal argument submitted to a court is not a podcast episode. In those contexts, the pressure for completion has to be balanced against the real cost of getting it wrong. But most of what most people produce is not a bridge. Most of the work sitting in draft form, most of the projects paused for further refinement, most of the things waiting to be done perfectly before they're done at all, they are magazine articles. They are good enough to be useful right now. And the people they could help are waiting. Anne Mulligan Smith said this to her editorial team in 1980 because she understood that a magazine that never published was not a magazine. The same principle applies to anything you're making, building, saying, or trying to do in the world. Release it. Improve the next one. That's not lowering the standard. That's understanding what the standard is actually for. Thanks for spending a few minutes here at the quote of corner. If this one made you think of something sitting in draft form that's been waiting just a little too long for perfect, you know what to do. And always remember wisdom isn't in the quote, it's in the reflection. I'll see you next time.