Reaching the “good enough” point
For every school assignment (and probably every other task, really), there’s a point where you decide that it’s good enough as it is, and you could continue to tinker with it, but that would probably drive you crazy without really making it much better. So you declare it done, turn it in, and hope for the best. I’ve been rediscovering this ever since I started taking classes again. This quarter, I caused myself a lot of probably undue stress over where the "good enough" point was for the grant proposal I wrote for one of my classes. I’d never written one before, so I wasn’t sure where to set the "good enough" point; plus it was 40% of my grade.
But I just got the grant proposal back, and apparently I shouldn’t have worried, because the professor liked it. And now I’ve hit an unmistakeable "good enough" point for the one remaining assignment of the term. All it needs is maybe an extra paragraph and a last look-over, and then it’ll be good to go.
Now that I think of it, the good-enough point is a pretty good illustration of satisficing, a concept that’s now entered the vocabulary of everyone in my classes. ("Yeah, I found a few more articles that looked on target, but I would have had to wait for ILL to get them to me and there’s no time, so I totally satisficed and went with the ones I could get.")
The best thing about satisficing? I can now go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. Hooray for the good-enough point.
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