Photo credit: Mary Thompson

If you were to open a brand new jar of peanut butter and try to get all the peanut butter out of the jar, how long would it take? You can use any tools you want so long as you bear in mind that the goal is to recover the peanut butter from the jar. So washing it down the drain does not help in accomplishing that goal.

I guess how long it would take largely depends on your definition of “all the peanut butter”.

Surely, within three or four minutes you could get basically all the peanut butter out of the jar. If you looked in the jar you would still see streaks and ribbons of peanut butter all over the inside of the jar but all of it put together wouldn’t add up to enough to make a respectable PB&J.

Photo credit: Josh (Listener42 on Flickr)

How much longer would it take to get it so that not one visible streak of peanut butter remained?

I’ve never tried it but my guess is maybe about an hour.

So let’s say you have the patience and determination to get every last bit of peanut butter out of the jar. Did you get it all? Have you done a “perfect” job of getting the peanut butter out?

Smell the jar.

It still smells like peanut butter. That’s a sign that there are still chemical traces of peanut butter left behind.

Remember, our goal was to recover the peanut butter from the jar. Not necessarily to use it for making a sandwich or anything useful, just to recover it and get it out of the jar.

Photo credit: Beau Giles

Now, if your definition of “all” the peanut butter is something like “all the peanut butter that’s useful in making sandwiches”, then you could easily do a perfect job of getting “all” the peanut butter out in three or four minutes.

If your definition is all the visible peanut butter, then you could probably do a perfect job in about an hour. Part of the point here is that you’ll start seeing diminishing returns on your effort after the first three or four minutes.

If your definition of “all” the peanut butter is every last chemical trace of the stuff, it may take considerably longer and require specialized tools or techniques. (Remember, trying to recover the peanut butter implies that we’re not contaminating it.) Again, the longer you keep at it and the closer you get to “perfect”, the more the returns on your effort diminish.

This principle can be applied to almost any area of life. When you do anything, you get about 80% or so of your results with relative ease. After that, each incremental advance you make toward 100% will increase the amount of time, effort and other resources needed to get there. And the rate of increase keeps increasing.

So the real first step toward greater productivity is to decide what perfect means to you for any given task. If you can settle for 80%-85% of “perfect”, you’ll get a lot more done.

Personally, I’d rather have 10 or 15 projects completed but only 85% perfect than to have just one project done to absolute perfection. Even if that one project is so immaculate that it makes angels weep.

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 The Peanut Butter Jar Theory of Perfection

 How long would it take to get all the peanut butter out of a brand new jar?

 How long it takes depends largely on your definition of “all”.

 You’ll start seeing diminishing returns on your effort after…

 The closer you get to “perfect”, the more the returns on your effort diminish.

 When you do anything, you get about 80% of your results with relative ease. After that…

 The real first step toward greater productivity is to decide what perfect means to you.

 I’d rather have this than just one project done to perfection. Even if it made angels weep.

Like most people, when I was young I didn’t own much. Everything I owned could easily be packed up in a pickup truck if I needed to move from Point A to Point B. Now, everything I own can’t even fit into one building.

You might be tempted to envy me or to think that’s a good thing. But lately I’ve been changing my thinking about why we own things.

Almost everything you own is because you needed that thing at one time or anticipated a high likelihood that you would need it in the future. (In this context, pure enjoyment counts as “need”.) Whether it’s a lawnmower, a chainsaw, a microwave oven, a glass knick-knack or even a ball-point pen, you bought that thing so that you would have unfettered use of it when the need arose.

Image courtesy of MoreSatisfyingPhotos.com

Let’s just say that you own a sailboat (we all should be so lucky), but now you live nowhere near the water. Or perhaps it has some mechanical problem that makes it unseaworthy. You still own it but without the benefit of being able to use it.

As it turns out, what we’re really after most of the time is the use of things and not so much the outright ownership of them.

Granted, there are times when frequency of use makes ownership more practical than alternatives like borrowing or renting. Other factors may also be at play. For instance, the “ick-factor” ensures that you would rather own your toothbrush than simply have use of some random toothbrush when you need it.

On the other hand, time-shares continue to be popular because it’s a much cheaper alternative than owning a vacation home. (Or a whole network of them in various places you might like to visit.) On-demand car rental companies like Zipcars have become popular for much the same reason. For that matter, streaming media such as on-demand movies further leverage the use-is-better-than-ownership philosophy.

Where am I going with this?

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. This is a bit of an exploration of the concept.

I’m interested in learning what thoughts others have on the topic. Please feel free to comment below. Perhaps it will help my own thoughts become more coherent and well-formed.

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