Typos (and other lessons in perfection)

In a recent post Fred Wilson of AVC.com talked about typos in his blog, and how their existence is OK.

AVC is me. I am human. Humans are imperfect. So AVC should be imperfect.
So there it is. I am letting it stand.

Back when I was a young entrepreneur in the 1990s I used to obsess on perfection in my work. One of the big lessons in thirty years of startup life is that nothing is ever perfect. Not only not perfect, but never totally complete or done.

In Not Juggling, but Flashing I talk about how much I get accomplished. Giving up perfection is one secret toward that level of efficiency. Like Fred I don’t reread my blog posts or my email. I hit send and move on.

I do reread marketing copy, websites, contracts, and other written material, but I expect that even then a typo or two will make it through. I read and reread by book manuscripts multiples times before sending them to my editor, but they always came back with dozens of corrections.

Perhaps these days where authenticity is highly valued, typos and other imperfections are calling signs of the humanity behind the brand. Perhaps in the old days there were more expectations of perfections, or at least more horror upon finding imperfection.

That I don’t know, and like a typo, I’m fine with the knowledge that I can’t answer every question.

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