Done is Better than Good

Voice of the DBA

Mary Spender is a musician in the UK who I follow and hope to see live one day. She works hard producing content about music, that business, and, of course, songs. Recently she had a little essay on Instagram where talked about creative time and focus. In it she referenced Elizabeth Gilbert saying “done is better than good.”

My initial reaction was “that’s right.”

Then I thought about software, and poor queries impacting database performance, and thought, “No, that’s not right.” My next reaction was to think maybe it’s “done is better than great”. I do see plenty of engineers trying to build great software. Code that would impress their peers or their former professors. Or maybe their future self.

Then I thought, no, Elizabeth is right. If things don’t get done, then what’s the point?

At the same time, I think that “done” and “good” (or great) aren’t mutually exclusive. We can get things done and make them great, which is something to strive for. We can also get good things done.

Sometimes.

Sometimes we don’t have that luxury of time, for various reasons. If I had to make a trade, I push for good (or quality) as much as possible if the delay isn’t substantial. If it is, then done is likely the choice I’d make. I do try to return and refactor, improve, etc. to raise the quality over time, but I recognize that sometimes getting something done is important. Certainly, on the ranch, I need to fix things to get by, with the aim of doing a better job later. I have mixed success at returning to improve a patch with a better fix later, but so far, that’s worked well. I’d say the same thing has happened while building software or managing systems, with enough success to be comfortable with my choices.

What about you? What choices have you had to make about being done over delivering something that’s good? Or maybe great.

Steve Jones

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