Best of What's Available

One day I drove across town to a specialty foods store to pick up a hard-to-find ingredient.  Afterward, I noticed that an outlet location for a sporting goods store was next door. I needed some new athletic socks, so I popped in to look.

The footwear section had lots of socks: tall socks and mid-length socks, grey socks and black socks, thin socks and thick socks. But I was looking for stretchy, short white socks. And I started to hem and haw about which attributes to sacrifice.

That's when I realized...I was choosing the best among what was available, not getting what I really wanted.

Tech startups have a saying: "done is better than perfect".  And for many decisions, good enough is good enough.  It's better to choose from among what's available and keep moving than to spend hours hunting for the absolute best option or refining minute details.

Other times, it's important to get what you really want. 

One of the best ways I've found to navigate this is to make a list of criteria that matter most to me, before I start looking at options, so I don't forget what I was looking for, simply because it's not available.  I find this is useful for shopping, business decisions, and many other situations. By identifying what factors really matter to me, I'm more able to recognize when 'best available' is good enough, and when to walk away and keep searching.