Assignment 19 - Lia Jacobs

I don't have many pieces of advice that serve as guiding principles for my life, but one of my favorites was what my dad told my mom a few years ago: "Better is good enough for now". Some people find the phrasing a bit difficult to digest, so basically all it means is to take baby steps instead of leaps. To fully understand the context would take a lot of explaining, so really all you need to know is that my dad likes to keep things tidy whereas my mom seems to lack that skillset. Its rarely a large problem, but its always a source of frustration for my dad. From what I can understand, my mom starts by maybe leaving her shoes in the kitchen, then leaves some clothes on the floor, and before you know it all of her stuff is a mess. While I don't suffer from this chronic messiness, my mom and I do share a lovely ability to get easily intimidated by large tasks. So this is where the advice comes in, my mom gets overwhelmed with cleaning up her colossal mess and doesn't fix it until one day she decides she's had enough and the whole house must be spotless. This, of course, is rather annoying to the rest of the family who doesn't feel the need to mop the floor and wash the windows because of one person's sudden need for tidiness. So, our family has had to adopt this mantra, "better is good enough for now" so that all of the cleaning happens gradually and not all on one day. Its impact on me has not been life-altering, but whenever I'm presented with a giant task I don't get nearly as intimidated. I just remember that even the tiniest amount of progress is still progress.