Don't Settle for Mediocre

Better to have nothing than a suboptimal outcome

In never split the difference, Chriss Voss explains that compromises never leads to good outcomes. I love this quote.

“A woman wants her husband to wear black shoes with his suit. But her husband doesn’t want to; he prefers brown shoes. So what do they do? They compromise, they meet halfway. And, you guessed it, he wears one black and one brown shoe. Is this the best outcome? No! In fact, that’s the worst possible outcome. Either of the two other outcomes—black or brown—would be better than the compromise. Next time you want to compromise, remind yourself of those mismatched shoes.”

Similarly, settling in your career, work, or life is making a compromise between a zero-state (what you had when you started) and an ideal state (what you want).

You end up with a suboptimal, mediocre solution. You tell yourself lies, think it’s good enough, but you know you will ultimately regret it later.

It’s ok to change the destination of the journey, it’s not acceptable to stop halfway through.

It’s okay to make a stop to refresh, it’s not acceptable to stay there and call it a day.

Either in life or work, never compromise on your key objectives. Do not settle for less than what you want. It’s better to keep iterating until you get what you expect than settling for mediocre outcomes you will regret.

As Bezos said,

Be stubborn on vision but flexible on details.