Is PERFECTIONISM a form of COWARDICE?
Published February 20, 2024 · 15:46 · 119,141 views
About This Video
A two-part thesis refined on a morning run in Topanga: perfectionism is a form of arrogance; disruptive perfectionism is a form of cowardice. Van tests it against his own practice. Last year he made 300 minutes of content: three feature films. Wes Anderson made one. He's a good-enough artist, optimized for speed and reliability, not excellence. Last year he made 300 minutes of content solo. Wes Anderson made one film with a full crew. Both are valid routes to excellence: chase perfection until you achieve it (Lombardi), or repeat good-enough so many times that your standard rises (Van).
Then a Patreon subscriber named Ari delivers a gift: a handmade tool chest in rift white oak with zero-tolerance joinery, and Van has to reckon with what excellence actually looks like when it arrives at your door.
Transcript
this episode is about a gift from Ari one of our spirited man patreon subscribers Ari contacted me through the patreon and that's how this episode was conceived at the end of this video there's an onscreen link directly to the patreon if you want to sign up going to pick up a gift from someone who is an excellent Creator artist I never read my YouTube comments if someone's responding as me to my YouTube comments they're an impostor but I do read I think every single message I receive on my patreon and I do this on Fridays and it's a great part of my week because it's my interaction with my audience and with the like ride or die core of my audience and a lot of audience people write in and ask me how I deal with perfectionism or they say that they are having trouble with perfectionism and that it's getting in the way of them starting or finishing a project so I've been thinking about this concept for a while of perfectionism and on my run I digest these thoughts and I just came up with this brutal idea perfectionism is a form of cowardice and I thought about it more and I'm like well no because there are some artists who are sort of plagued with perfectionism but they make excellent work as a result so it's not it's not cowardice disrupted perfectionism is a form of cowardice and then I started thinking more about well what is what is perfectionism what what are you doing when you're when you're holding up your standard to perfect and you're essentially in a way playing God who are you to decide what is perfect and what is not that's up for us the viewer the consumer of whatever you're making to decide and so I came up with a sort of addendum to my quotation and the addendum is perfectionism is a form of arrogance disruptive perfectionism is a form of cowardice that's in the hopes of the people that you know maybe listen to me that they will associate perfectionism with two pejoratives cowardice and arrogance but the question remains do I have a problem with it and I don't think I don't think we can get to perfectionism perfectionism isn't up to us but there's this excellent standard and then good enough standard and I am a good enough artist my like overriding rule is get it done it's finish the project that's what I'm optimized for finish the project finish it by Thursday so that I can upload it and that includes if I'm making a parachute roll up device for my truck and I'm making a video about it I've got to make both by Friday therefore I have to cut Corners which is workarounds essentially and enough workarounds you develop a style and you develop technique that might be your own and as a result if you're lucky you may develop originality and hopefully I I have a degree of that but it comes from this good enough attitude last Friday I'm reading the messages on patreon I get a message from a patron named Ari he said I've made you a gift and then he links to his Instagram I follow the link and it's there's a bunch of pictures of work that he's made and I don't know which one is the one that's the gift for me but there's one that I've got my eye on and I hope it is and so I write him back which one is it and he says oh it's the top left one or whatever in the feed and I look and I'm at once excited and also I'm like oh sh because he is an Ari is an Excellence Creator an Excellence artist and I felt like this gift that he's made is too good it's too good to be a gift like how can I honor this gift I'm not capable of honoring this gift because I just do good enough stuff I don't make excellent stuff but he made it unsolicited he made it just and then he showed it to me he didn't like foist it on me or ship it to my house so that now there's this big thing I have to deal with he just said you know he was very humble about it and so greedy me I'm just like when can I pick this thing up and I picked it up yesterday so I had the weekend to sort of think about it and think about Excellence versus good enough and that's why we have this video so I'll just pick one example of what makes me a good enough artist um I shot some footage of me so I could have footage of me in the car going to Ari's in case I needed to put voiceover underneath and I put the camera on face recognition and then I put the camera on autofocus and it's completely out of focus and I shot on the way home so if you're from Los Angeles and you're sharp and you drive the 10 a lot you're going to be like wait a second he's not going to Downtown LA he's leaving from downtown LA but to me good enough I just need this footage so that I can have my narration underneath it good enough and I'm not going to go back and I'm not going to re-shoot it Wes Anderson would re-shoot it Wes Anderson would get it in my mind perfect and in his mind good enough but in his mind good enough is excellent I think all of Wes Anderson's films are excellent and I think people who disparage his films don't necessarily value excellence and perhaps they're looking for Perfection one of my brothers has a problem with Wes Anderson films and I I'm just like do you not see the Excellence he brings and my my brother has a good point and that he my brother is not engaged by by the story and that's perhaps maybe what keeps it from Perfection but it doesn't keep it from excellence and some of his movies like Rushmore are excellent and perfect and to me Wes Anderson is the best filmmaker of that of his generation and if I had to keep one of all those guys and gals I would keep him because he's original and his work is of the highest degree of Excellence to me my work in my mind is when I'm making it I I reach these good enough levels where I'm doing a task and like no not right not right not right not perfect good enough keep it take that shot Etc whatever it is the script good enough the idea good enough as a result last year I made 300 minutes about of content of audiovisual content that's three feature films I think Wes Anderson made one last year he might have made two he has two coming out this year this is the first time I think maybe in his career that he's had two features come out in one year but I am my own gaffer I'm My Own cameraman I'm My Own editor I'm My Own director I am my own Teamster one guy so what the corner I cut is the Excellence corner I do the good enough but I do all of the these things Teamster gaffer director to a good enough level because I am optimized for Speed and reliability not you know perfect camera angles perfect lighting perfect audio no I want these things robust I want them out they're like I don't know I hope they're as high quality as Toyota reliability above all I I think I learned this in Tom Sachs's Studio he had this ethic this any job big or small do it well or not at all once a job has begun do not stop until it's done and then Tom even made these little stickers and they said Crusty the Clown's seal of approval it's not just good it's good enough so you have Perfection good enough and in between you have excellence and this is why Ari's gift is excellent it's made out of rift and white oak not the crappy Douglas fir that I make everything out of and if you look at all the joinery it's all either zero tolerance or 30 maybe 64th of an inch tolerance I build everything to 16th of an inch tolerance you can see there's little spaces in between the drawers here that's to allow the wood to expand and contract with the humidity and the seasons without the drawers getting jammed the drawers on this even with weight in them are smoother than these ball bearing drawers from this Craftsman uh tool chest dovetail joints the rails are I don't know 3/8 of an inch deep so that there's the least amount of friction and that allows the drawers to go in and out the the drawer bottoms are some beautiful like three ply hardwood plywood the handles are perfect it's heavy it's solid it's perfectly square but above all it's the soul of the thing it took already a month to make and it's it's excellent I think there's two routes to Excellence and the first route is the Lombardi route the Vince Lombardi route Vince Lombardi was a football coach he won five NFL championships three in a row three of the five were in a row and then he won the first two Super Bowls and Vince Lombardi or as they call him in Green Bay the pope said Perfection is not attainable but if we Chase Perfection we can achieve Excellence Perfection is not attainable but if we Chase perfection we can achieve Excellence so the pursuit of perfection or positive perfectionism can Elevate you to a level of Excellence perhaps it's not the technique I use and the second route to Excellence I hope is my good enough ethos in which I am good enough good enough good enough good enough over and over and over and over again with productivity and prolific production optimized such that my good in the good enough is raised to a higher and higher standard so that at some point it reaches the level of extremely good which is the dictionary definition of Excellence something is excellent when it is extremely good so my hope is through this repetition and discipline my good enough will be at a level at a standard of extremely good Aristotle the Greek gave us a prescription for how to put Excellence sorry for how to put perfection in our work Aristotle gave us a clue and Aristotle said pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work with Ari's tool chest my tool chest now I can feel the pleasure he took in building it I can also very easily feel the pain and the pain in the ass it was to build it and I could when I visited him in his shop I could see the pleasure this was a happy man in this phase of my creative or artistic development I'm trying to optimize pleasure and joy in the things I make and with this particular video so far it hasn't been miserable the spirited man patreon is basically the alternative Universe to this YouTube channel and right now there's about half a dozen unpublished spirited Man YouTube videos on our patreon ad free we also have interviews that I shot 20 years ago in Berlin about Berlin expats also I do live streams also it's the best way to get in touch with me I respond to nearly all of the messages I get on the patreon about every week There's Something New it's five bucks a month