Embrace your weakness
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Last week I bought a secondhand computer monitor for the home studio that I am creating. It is a huge Philips 43-inch 4k monster display, one of the very best on the market. A huge screen is perfect in a music studio for two reasons: 1) Audio production requires a lot of screen real estate and 2) You can operate the computer from a distance (for example, from behind the drum kit) and still see what’s going on. I also use it to sightread the songs that I am learning on various musical instruments (think Guitar hero style). I had been looking for a computer monitor for a long time when this behemoth showed up in my feed, close to where I live, for a fraction of the sticker price. However, the ad stated that the previous owner had damaged it by dropping a tool when installing it, which resulted in a big bright dead pixel with white light in the middle of the screen. Here’s the catch: I find dead pixels extremely annoying! My eyes are drawn to that sucker constantly. Even though the price was a bargain, the dead pixel disturbed me so much that it was a no-brainer to walk away. And that is precisely the reason that I bought it.
I am an engineer and my greatest weakness is that I over-work just about anything I touch. I find it very hard to let things go and move on. In one of my early Vlogs, I called it “the engineer’s curse”. I have a strong drive within me to make things perfect, but as the saying goes: Perfection equals paralysis. If you are also an engineer, you will understand what I am talking about. You cannot become an engineer if you don’t have that gene with obsession to detail. Because if you don’t, the things you design might fall apart, and people will die. Some of us (me for example) might have a bit too much of that obsession for our own good. If the world was run by engineers, nothing would ever get done. We would just keep polishing and never say “it’s done” and move on. That’s why teamwork is important. We need other team members that force us to constantly release our unfinished products to the market.
If I had learned the lesson that “Done is better than perfect” when I was younger, I would be in a completely different place now. But it’s never too late to change and I am grateful that I am on a better path now. Nowadays, every time that I release something sloppy, I celebrate! Because I know that when I consider something that I have created sloppy, the quality is more than enough (for normal people). And that’s what matters. I wrote about the turning point in my story about the “No-No switch”. It was an occasion on par with my marriage or the day my son was born.
So, it’s not just about releasing stuff even when your whole body is screaming that you must iron out that 99,9th percent that no-one except you will ever care about or even notice. It’s more like a lifestyle choice. That’s why I choose to introduce imperfect things in my life, like dead pixels and No-No switches. Having a dog is also great, because they constantly make a mess of everything. Especially when combined with a kid. By installing the “broken” monitor as the center piece in my home studio, I will have that bright dead pixel screaming “DONE IS BETTER THAN PERFECT” in my face as a constant reminder. I am convinced that it will increase my productivity. It is also a great reminder that you must look at the whole picture and not just one broken pixel. A 4k display has 8,3 million pixels, to put things into perspective. That’s how you can look at your life as well. Even if there are some dead pixels here and there that steals your attention, the rest of the screen is probably perfectly usable.
Maybe I should have paid the seller more than the asking price, perhaps even more than the price for a new one in the store? He would surely have considered me crazy, and so might you. But the mindset I choose to approach the dead pixel challenge, might make the damaged monitor invaluable.