Chapter 1 Avoiding the Chase for Perfection

In my opinion, when people strive to work on things to the point of perfection, they are usually fooling themselves and getting caught up either in their ego or in a self-doubt/self-critical feedback loop. Perfectionists spend so much time and energy making miniscule improvements and redoing perfectly fine work that they often end up losing sight of the ultimate goals of the projects they tackle. We’ve all heard the statistic that 90 percent of our efforts are expended on 10 percent of the result. It’s usually the last 10 percent or the last 25 percent that does us in and keeps good ideas from going somewhere. The 80/20 rule is another way of saying something similar. So do not fall into that trap! Deliberately work to a point where you can share what you’ve done even when you know it needs work — that’s the key.

When I studied in Glasgow, Scotland, I had a classmate who was an incredibly talented architectural designer. The only problem was that he always aimed for perfection in everything he did. He would work endlessly on something and never knew how to let go; he could not move on until it was perfect, which meant that he rarely moved on at all. He consistently produced beautiful artifacts, but he never completed them. Regardless of the assignment and its importance, he put in the same amount of effort and placed the same amount of pressure on himself. As a result, he suffered greatly from stress, even over assignments that were inconsequential. This is a lesson we will come back to: not everything is a big deal. He had been taught by his parents, I can only assume, to pursue perfection at all costs; indeed, to equate his own value as a person with how close to perfect his accomplishments were.

Because he did not know how to stop and be satisfied, each assignment was a huge challenge for him. Being human, he repeatedly produced things that were less than perfect. Not surprisingly, his self-esteem suffered greatly. He had never learned the valuable lesson of scaling effort to the importance of the task at hand. Nobody had taught him that chasing perfection was a fool’s errand. Nobody had taught him that his value as a person wasn’t tied directly to everything he worked on. By the end of the year, my friend was close to failing due to the number of assignments he simply could not complete, even though he had more talent than just about anyone else in our class. He refused to move on with one element of an assignment until he deemed it perfect, at which point he simply ran out of time to finish the rest or became immobilized by the self-generated pressure. The sad thing was that the quality of his work was higher than just about anyone’s in our year — but he was his own worst enemy. In trying to go for a home run each time, he never scored a single hit.

I’m sure you know people like this, or perhaps you recognize this tendency in yourself.

Later in life, I became friends with a man who was an amazing trumpet player. From a young age, he showed talent that his father (as well as his teachers) spotted as real potential. In his efforts to encourage his son, the father ended up instilling an unhealthy set of expectations focused on being “perfect.” As my friend got older, he stopped playing music altogether. I assumed that he quit because he no longer enjoyed the trumpet, but he told me that he loved the instrument and missed it terribly. However, he gave it up when family and work obligations limited his practice time to what he perceived as an unacceptable level, and he began to hear nothing but his mistakes. For him, this artistic pursuit was all or nothing; he felt he needed to be perfect or not play at all. In his case, a quest for perfection killed the music in this man, and I believe that his life was less rich as a result.

One of the secrets to success is knowing when to stop — how hard to work and for how long. I have seen so many great talents waste their skills on the hubris of perfection.

In so many disciplines, the perfect is the enemy of the good. People obsess over details, worrying about acceptance, approval, and propriety. By the time they finish an endeavor, the reality has often changed, making their deliberations all for naught. I have watched as skilled professionals have blown projects not by underperforming but by overthinking to the point where they missed deadlines or exceeded budgets. Show me a perfectionist, and I will show you someone who does not get much done.

People throw away what they could have

by insisting on perfection, which they

cannot have, and looking for it where they

will never find it.

—EDITH SCHAEFFER

The greater the emphasis on perfection,

the further it recedes.

—HARIDAS CHAUDHURI

The thing that is really hard, and really

amazing, is giving up on being perfect and

beginning the work of becoming yourself.

—ANNA QUINDLEN

How do we seek and identify the ¾ baked sweet spot of our own undertakings? How do we give ourselves permission to be less than perfect, while demanding from ourselves more than mediocrity? How do we embrace the “magic of imperfection”?

Often, when I am seeking my own answers to life’s dilemmas, I cook. I find that cooking provides many lessons applicable to our lives and the decisions we must make. Releasing a project when it is ¾ baked is a lot like preparing asparagus. If you steam fresh asparagus until it is “perfectly cooked,” it will end up overdone and soggy by the time you eat it. Why? Because, just like pasta, it continues to cook as long as it is hot, and there’s a very fine line between deliciously al dente and horribly mushy. An experienced chef knows to remove the asparagus from the hot water when it is about ¾ cooked. Some push a little past ¾ done but plunge it into cold water immediately after removing it from the heat. In either case, the universe (in the form of cold water or the absence of hot water) finishes the job to help accomplish crunchy but cooked excellence.

When we put something out in the world — an idea, a design, a project — we must be willing to accept that it likely isn’t perfect. So why fight this reality? Why not embrace it and use it to get more done and to get more feedback? When we are open to possible changes and criticisms and invite others to expand upon our original vision, we give our work and ourselves a great gift. When we hold on to an idea too long as we pursue its perfect execution, we run the risk of squeezing the life right out of it. Overcooked ideas are ones that lose their freshness and no longer produce desirable outcomes.

So, an idea’s sweet spot — the time and place at which it is ¾ baked — is the magical point between its conception and its death by strangulation. If you truly wish to be effective in business and life, you must learn how to recognize and cultivate this sweet spot (see Figure 1.1).

When we release our ideas into the ether, magical transformations can take place. It takes courage to let go of our biggest and boldest work, especially when doing so requires acknowledging imperfections and possibilities for error. But taking that chance often leads to great things — magical things, even — when the ideas are good enough to take on a life of their own.

The universe, it seems, will provide what is required when we allow it to, doing away with bad ideas (usually for everyone’s benefit) and elevating good ones. The individual who conceives the idea, and is strong enough to release it fully when it is ¾ baked, enables the world to

• determine whether the idea is worthy,
• strengthen the idea and help it shine more brightly,
• focus on the idea rather than the author, and
• remember that letting go of ego can be the best idea of all.

After all, if it is change we seek, we need not concern ourselves with glory. Work released in the right spirit tends to find ways to reward its creator. The ideas that come out of the collective movement will safeguard our future, regardless of how or by whom they are created. Releasing ideas into the universe in the spirit of selfless passion for change results in powerful magic.

Since the mid-1990s, I have been focused on a concept that I call Living Buildings. I coined the term while working on a project in Montana called the EpiCenter, as our team sought to describe building performance that was “truly sustainable.” The idea is that nature, not machines, provides the ideal metaphor for the buildings of the future.

What is a Living Building? Imagine a building designed and constructed to function as elegantly and efficiently as a flower, one that is informed specifically by place, climate, topography, and microclimate. Imagine buildings that generate all their own energy with renewable resources; capture, treat, and reuse water in a closed-loop process; operate pollution-free with no toxic chemicals used in any material — all while being a beautiful inspiration to anyone who interacts with them. Even before LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the industry benchmark) came to fruition, my colleagues and I spent hours focusing on how to develop the Living Building idea, eventually publishing a series of articles on the subject. Back then, it was always only a fuzzy concept — a vague notion of the kind of impact we wanted buildings to have.

In 2005, I was encouraged by the strides that the green building industry was finally making. I had worked on two Platinum LEED projects and two Gold LEED projects, all of which were completed on budget and on time, and I was convinced that the industry was ready to go deeper. So, in my spare time in the evenings and on weekends, I began working on codifying what a Living Building needed to do to deserve the designation. I finished the first version of the Living Building Challenge (Figure 1.2) while moving out to Seattle to start as the new CEO of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council in the summer of 2006 (Cascadia eventually became the International Living Future Institute). I knew that what I had on my hands was a special document, but I also understood that it was far from perfect. As defined on the International Living Future Institute’s website (Living-Future.org), the Living Building Challenge is

a philosophy, advocacy tool, and certification program defining today’s most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment. It addresses all buildings at all scales and is an inclusive tool for transformative design. Whether the project is a single building, a renovation, an infrastructure project, or a park, the Living Building Challenge provides a framework for designing, constructing, and improving the symbiotic relationships between people and all aspects of the built and natural environments.

It was a powerful idea — ¾ baked — and ready to be shared with the industry. I decided to bring the intellectual property to Cascadia and to give it away without asking for any compensation. It had too much potential to be “owned” by a single individual, and the spirit of the tool demanded that personal profit could not be a motivator in releasing the work. But there was an important condition: when I offered the tool to the organization’s board of directors, I told them that they could have it if we made it a centerpiece in the organization’s future. They accepted, and that decision started a chain of powerful and positive outcomes.

Any good idea needs three things: the right timing, the right message, and the right platform. With Cascadia, all three began to align to make the Living Building Challenge a reality (see Figure 1.2). Pulling some strings with friends at the US Green Building Council, Bob Berkebile (my mentor that I’ll introduce later) and I united to present the idea at the 2006 GreenBuild (the largest green building conference in the world) in Denver to a crowd of several thousand leading practitioners. Opening right before my childhood hero, David Suzuki, we asked the assembled delegation to join us in “accepting the Challenge.” In a moment that will always remain a powerful personal milestone for me, the whole assembly rose in a spontaneous standing ovation. Releasing a ¾ baked idea had started a paradigm shift in the building industry.

Since then, what has happened has been truly phenomenal: hundreds of projects have emerged all over North America and beyond, racing to be the first Living Buildings in their respective markets. Now, Living Buildings exist in many communities as living proof of what is possible.

These buildings will provide critical models for how people will live, work, and play in the coming decades, finally reconciling the balance between the natural and built environments. Thousands of people from many different disciplines — most of whom I have never even met — are now working to advance the ideas of the Living Building Challenge around the world and in so doing changing it for the better.