Be Dissatisfied
An article with this title appeared the January 8, 1956 issue of This Week The Sunday Magazine, a publication included in newspapers. It impressed me so much I had the page framed and hung it on my office wall in Barrington, N.J. I still have it on the wall of my Fort Lauderdale office. An editor found it posted in a print shop. It says:
If your own performance of a job looks perfect to you, it isn’t because you’ve done a perfect job. It’s only because you have imperfect standards!
The article states that “the greatest trait a man can have is a total inability to be completely satisfied with his own handiwork. The feeling of having done a job well is rewarding: the feeling of having done it perfectly is fatal.”
This all ties into the scientific method - to be dissatisfied you must be curious and skeptical. Stage 1 of the scientific method - curious observation - is what leads to what is wrong, what can be done differently, what could be better, and what change can be made. So be both dissatisfied and curious.
