The Pursuit of Perfection

Sometimes perfection isn’t what you should be striving for. Sometimes, good enough really is good enough.

Over the last 2 months I’ve spent an incredible amount of time rewriting and trying to perfect Better WP Security. On nights after work and weekends at home I’ve put in anywhere from 40 – 80 hours per week on it adding features and fixing bugs that, in some cases aren’t even bugs at all but instead are a symptom of a perfectionist who can’t leave good enough alone.

Throughout that time, while my attention has been monopolized by perfection of a single project, I’ve watched this blog begin it’s decent into obscurity once again. I haven’t written a new post in weeks (other than Better WP Security update notices) and what I have done even there has been, well, a little lacking. In the meantime 5 other WordPress plugins I currently have in the repository on WordPress.org and 2 Google Chrome extensions that are currently in the Chrome Web Store have been all but forgotten and even my limited social life outside of my work has completely dissappeared.

It’s time to step back and put my work in perspective. Better WP Security is a great plugin, I use it on all of my own sites and will continue to develop it but at a more realistic pace. I need to step back and look at what it is I want out of the plugin and this site and devote my time to a much broader range of development and activities both here and in my life in general.

With a little luck, and a lot more time on my hands, the coming weeks and months will see a return to regular posts on this site as well as some much needed updates to other projects I have going on. Better WP Security will continue to grow, but at a much more realistic pace and more narrow focus than the beast I have let it become. In addition, I plan on starting to update a number of my other plugins such as Share Center Pro and a few others in order to bring them a little more up to date with current versions of WordPress.

The moral of the story, perfection is a great but when it becomes and obsession you have a problem. We’ve all been guilty of letting a project consume us at one time or another. At some point you need to step back and realize there is more to what it is you do than that single project. Not only will the rest of your work benefit from the change but, in many cases, so will the project that has cost you so much of your sanity.