The Curious Coder #2 | Perfectionism Kills Dreams, Imperfection Creates Them
In the second edition of The Curious Coder, I share my experience with perfectionism and how reaching the state of good enough is what gets things done
Hi!
Hope you are well. First of all, Happy New Year! To be honest, I don’t know exactly when one should stop wishing others a happy new year. I think it’s when February strikes?
Since we are talking about new beginnings, here’s something that I have been reflecting on. In this edition of my email, I want to share something that has been resonating with me lately. It is this: There’s no reason you cannot do it. This applies to everything: building that project, taking that trip, singing that song in front of your friends, clicking pictures and posting online. What we are the most afraid of is getting rejected by our peers, family or friends. We fear judgement and hence we think it is better if we just keep our head down and scroll through social media, liking and saving things that we would like to do some day. Let me tell you, that some day will never arrive. You are living your life right now and this is it. This is the time to do it.
Why you feel stuck (and how to fix it)
Let me share a quick story.
I enjoy music. I enjoy singing and listening to interesting music. In fact, I have been taking Indian classical vocal lessons for a little over a year now. Initially, when I started, I had a bit of stage fright. The first time I sang, it was in front of my batch mates, and I was so afraid of making a mistake that it made me nervous and I could not finish even a paragraph of that song. It embarrassed me.
I wanted to sing in front of an audience, and I practiced. I practiced singing more and in front of familiar faces to feel comfortable. Eventually, I could sing in front of the crowd but it wasn’t incredible.
I consider myself an average singer, and am trying each day to be better. Yesterday, on January 26th, 2025, India celebrated its 76th Republic Day and I wanted to put out something. I had been practicing a song for a couple of weeks and event tried harmonizing with my own voice. I recorded myself singing it and uploaded a minute-long YouTube Short on my channel.
Is it perfect? Absolutely not. I can point out a lot of mistakes.
Has it got a good reach? Nope.
Am I happy with it? Yes, because I took action.
Instead of trying to make it perfect and never sharing the result, I got to a good enough state and considered it done. This will encourage me to sing the next song a little better. And it will snowball into a video that meets that “perfect” benchmark. Here’s the video. Let me know what you think about it. Did you like it? Did your ears bleed? Hit Reply and be brutally honest. I won’t take offense, I promise.
What did I learn from this little experiment?
Well, a lot. I learnt how to record and mix audio frequencies in Garageband. I learnt how to record and sync videos with the recorded audio in iMovie. I learnt how to let go of the perfectionist mindset to deliver something.
It’s not just this video. Even the email that you are reading is not perfect. But here I am, in front of you, trying to share an idea.
What’s something you’ve been holding back on because it’s not perfect yet?
What will you ship this week?
Curated Clicks
Here are a few links I think are worth sharing.
DeepSeek [AI Tool]: If you are familiar with ChatGPT, this model is the latest addition to the list of incredible LLM tools. Folks on X are blown away by its results and rightly so.
Klack [Software]: I love good quality software and this is easily one of them. This macOS-only app makes realistic mechanical keyboard sounds with each stroke. The developer buys physical keyboards and records every keystroke to replicate the sound perfectly. It is a paid app but so worth it.
How Exceptional People Think [Article]: A brilliant piece of writing and illustrations describing how the best of the best think. Highly recommend a read!
Why Indians Can’t Stop Comparing [Video]: Although the title mentions Indians (for engagement), it is applicable to all and this beautifully edited video sheds light on how Mimetic Theory works. Worth a watch!
FFmpeg by example [Website]: This website showcases unique, practical ways to use FFmpeg. When editing the YouTube Short (that you just saw) and layering multiple clips on top of each other, I learnt that FFmpeg (a free utility in all Unix-based systems) is the foundation for almost all of video editing software. You can achieve complex edits by running simple Terminal commands. For example, to layer three videos on top of each other, this was the command I used:
ffmpeg -i video1.mp4 -i video2.mp4 -i video3.mp4 -filter_complex vstack=inputs=3 output.mp4