Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?
Okay. I’m not old enough to have used a quill regularly. But there’s something about the idea of slowing down in writing that is missing today.
It’s so easy to fire off e-mails, one after the other, without really thinking about the consequences. In times gone by, if you were angry with someone, you might have to sharpen your quill, dip your ink, and scratch away at the paper before sending your letter to arrive “sometime” in the future. It allowed time to think, “Is this really such an issue?”
There’s also something calming and comforting about the feel of a fountain pen scratching paper fibres as it glides across the page. It’s soothing. And it’s something that’s sadly missing today. Screens with styli come close. But there’s nothing to beat a dip pen, liquid ink, and paper.
What’s something you used to worry about but don’t anymore?
Wanting to be perfect is not a bad thing. It helps us to always strive for improvement. But we still need to remember that we’re not perfect. We are going to get it wrong at times.
I used to worry about this. I wanted everything I did to be perfect, mainly because nothing I did ever seemed to please others. This was coupled with the common fallacy, “Good enough, isn’t (good enough).”
Then I came across two concepts that made me think.
The first was a building drawing for the carpenters. Having gone to great lengths to specify proper dimensions the architect’s drawing pointed to one piece of timber with the dimension, “Fit on site.” The exact dimension was to be adjusted by the carpenter, depending on what had been done previously, because building with bricks and mortar isn’t an exact, or perfect, science.
The second concept was the Pareto principle. 80% of the results come from 20% of the work. It means that we could be spending most of our time achieving very little.
And then it struck me. Just because we like consistency, it isn’t always necessary. Otherwise we would all look and act and speak the same. We would be robots. But what’s attractive about humans is the differences between us. We love those differences. We love not being perfect replicas of each other.
And suddenly, perfection didn’t matter so much any more. As someone pointed out to me, decades ago, a shirt that’s a perfect fit for one person will not fit someone bigger or smaller. Perfection is relative.
And now, I don’t worry about it any more. Yes, my perfectionist tendencies still make me feel bad, sometimes, especially in the face of negative criticism. But I’ve learned to take a step back and challenge my perfectionism. And it doesn’t worry me so much anymore.
Greenacre 9 