Ship It Before It's Ready: How to Beat Perfectionism

## The Big Idea Last month I saw The Tallest Man On Earth play in Asheville. He's one of the best live performers I've ever seen. In between songs, he paused, looked out into the crowd, and said: > I've given up on trying to be perfect Coming from someone that good, it landed hard. The best builders I know have made the same peace. Everything ships before it's perfect. The skill is what you do in the days after - and that starts with deciding, before you ship, what "working" looks like. ## Nothing we ship is perfect We expect perfection from ourselves, so we hold things back until they're _ready_. Polished. Done. But everything we ship goes live before it feels perfect. Every single thing. Shipping a feature with zero bugs after launch is beyond rare. That isn't a failure of process. It _is_ the process. Getting comfortable with that feeling is part of the job, and I'm not sure it ever fully goes away. (I wrote about a version of this years ago: [imperfection is part of the…

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