One of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome as I gained experience in my field as an automotive engineer has been the chase for perfection. Although I still idealize and search for continuous improvement in my work, I have come to understand that perfection is not a single outcome during the process. Let me explain what I mean.
We often think of perfection as the ultimate solution, which means that every single decision has to be "the correct decision". But the more you go into your practice, the more you realize that there is no such a thing as a "correct decision". On the other hand, we are forced to settle with the right decision at the time of making. Yes, we aim for the correct one, but many decisions would have been made differently with an extra bit of information or simply if they were made at a different point in time. Then perhaps, we should not consider this constraint as a settlement at all, and we should re-frame it as a liberation.
If we think on the design and development process as a trail with an immense number of forks on it, only one of those combinations leads to the idyllic perfect product/design. This makes it hard for a perfectionist to thrive and develop, unless of course they give up on the principle of perfection.
Let me be clear, this does not mean we stop the chase of it. And in some way I do believe this makes it even a more worthy and pure pursuit. Although some may be discouraged by the pursuit of an unrealizable concept, I think we can also find the beauty on chasing something unattainable. Finding joy in the path and not in the achievement. This does not mean that decision making is then irrelevant, on the contrary it becomes significantly more important. Every decision has to be made consciously since every path will lead to a different outcome.
Different combinations of decisions can lead to the same destination and entirely different combinations can lead to equally good ones. The path is not a single line toward one fixed point. It's a disorganized spectrum of possible outcomes, none of them identical, none of them strictly wrong. This is both more unsettling and more freeing than the perfectionist's map allows for.
At every fork, we have to aim for the most correct decision we can make. This frees ourselves from aiming at the "right decision". It allows us to explore with the risk of making mistakes, even if we don't know that they are mistakes. And most importantly, it frees us from the never ending search for more information, more inspiration, more examples, and more thinking. Committing to a decision sometimes is actively more important in the chase of perfection than getting stuck on every bifurcation. This allows for progress and it allows for changes and iterations. It allows us to explore a side of the trail to ultimately decide if it is the path we want to continue on, or if the next decision should try to correct course.
In conclusion, this is an invitation to let go of the idea of perfection in your craft and to embrace even harder on the pursuit of it. Be open to not making the correct decision, but to try to make the right decision. You will follow your own trail, with the information that you have on every fork. Make conscious decisions at every step but don't put too much pressure on getting it correct. The outcome will never be perfect and that is ok, you can make it right as long as perfection is your north star.