The Myth of Perfect

The business world revolves around perfection. Flawless execution, ultimate, the best or nothing—these words get thrown around, creating the impression that success means getting everything perfect every time we try. It’s great for marketing—after all, "we perform okay-ish" isn’t a strong selling point—but this mindset seeps into how people promote themselves and how they see their own performance. We start expecting perfection where it isn’t meant to exist.

Roger Federer once gave a famous speech, pointing out that while he won 80% of his matches, he won only 54% of the points within them. Mathematically, this makes perfect sense—if you win more than 50% of the points in a match, you win. But the idea that "if you fail slightly less than half the time, you can become the best in the world" feels counterintuitive. The best in the world is still 46% short of perfection.

A few years ago, the black-footed cat became famous online for its near-perfect hunting success rate. What was the actual rate? 60%. Still the highest in the Felidae family. And keep in mind—this is a skill their lives depend on, honed by thousands of years of evolution.

We didn’t evolve to close every deal, get every job we apply for, or finish every project on time and under budget. More than that, we innovate, pushing boundaries where failure is the default outcome.

The trick is, perfection is neither the goal nor the requirement for success. More often than not, it’s an illusion. We don’t need to get everything right—we just need to keep going long enough and learning enough to get the job done.

Unicorn tennis