I was recently in a meeting with a vendor who was showcasing his upgraded software for an RFP (Request for Proposal). This particular meeting was about the core functionality of his system and ensuring it met the specific system requirements. During the conversation, I inquired about the ability to change text size and color formatting on one of the menus in the system. He responded that, yes it could be, but he and his developers had not focused on menu formatting and then said he was reminded of a quote regarding premature optimization. He didn’t really elaborate on what that quote was and I didn’t ask for more detail, so he continued with his presentation. I took note of the phrase though, because I was curious why my comment had prodded him to say what he did. Later, I googled “premature optimization” and found these two words are part of a larger quote from Donald Knuth’s paper “Structured Programming with Goto Statements”.
"Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%."
Donald Knuth Although originally born as result of computer programming, the specific phrase in the quote "premature optimization is the root of all evil" rings true for so many of us. We often chase perfection on the written process, report, analysis or presentation we're outputting. Getting hung up on the color scheme, text alignment, font selection, or any one of the hundreds of items we can pick from can cause unneeded and often unnecessary work. We should stay focused on the critical 3% to ensure the success of our work and life output and prioritize the other 97% to achieve perfection. In other words "don't sweat the small stuff".