"Be able to meet any deadline, even if your work is done less well than it would be if you had all the time you would have preferred"
About this Quote
Deadlines turn craftsmanship into a moral drama: are you a serious person if you ship something imperfect? Marilyn vos Savant refuses the romance of “when it’s ready,” and the bluntness is the point. Her line isn’t a celebration of mediocrity; it’s a corrective to the seductive procrastination that often disguises itself as standards. “All the time you would have preferred” is a quietly devastating phrase because it names the real enemy: preference. Not ignorance, not lack of talent, but the fantasy schedule where conditions are ideal and the self is forever preparing to deserve the work.
The intent is practical, almost managerial: build reliability as a skill, not a personality trait. In creative and professional life, trust accrues to the people who can deliver under constraint. The subtext is that perfectionism is frequently a kind of control-seeking, a way to avoid exposure to judgment. A deadline forces contact with reality: budgets, editors, audiences, collaborators, the finite nature of attention.
Context matters here. Vos Savant rose as a public intellectual in a mass-media ecosystem that runs on publishing cycles and column inches, where the work is not merely to think well but to think on time. That’s why the sentence lands with a slightly bracing, utilitarian ethic: competence includes triage. Meet the deadline, learn what “good enough” actually means, and iterate later. The sharp truth is that unfinished excellence serves fewer people than finished adequacy, and the world rarely rewards the former.
The intent is practical, almost managerial: build reliability as a skill, not a personality trait. In creative and professional life, trust accrues to the people who can deliver under constraint. The subtext is that perfectionism is frequently a kind of control-seeking, a way to avoid exposure to judgment. A deadline forces contact with reality: budgets, editors, audiences, collaborators, the finite nature of attention.
Context matters here. Vos Savant rose as a public intellectual in a mass-media ecosystem that runs on publishing cycles and column inches, where the work is not merely to think well but to think on time. That’s why the sentence lands with a slightly bracing, utilitarian ethic: competence includes triage. Meet the deadline, learn what “good enough” actually means, and iterate later. The sharp truth is that unfinished excellence serves fewer people than finished adequacy, and the world rarely rewards the former.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
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