Take the B

Today,¹ I was cooking and I kept noticing how gritty the kitchen floor was under my feet. I thought, “I should sweep.” But it wasn’t that simple. If I was going to sweep, then I, of course, had to sweep the entire apartment. And if I was going to do that, I should really dust and wipe down all the surfaces first so that I didn’t have to sweep the floor again. And if I was going to wipe down all the surfaces, I would have to move a bunch of stuff, especially on top of our precariously crammed bathroom sink. So the simplest task, sweeping a 4 x 5 ft kitchen floor, blew up into a huge set of tasks that had to be executed perfectly in the correct order.

I was overwhelmed and I started to feel defeated. I feel like a loser when I’m paralyzed in the face of something so basic. But then this popped in my head: “You’re intimidated by the A. Take the B.”

Suddenly I felt so free! As the oven preheated, decided to do as much of the cleaning protocol as I felt like, and quit whenever I felt like. I wiped down the kitchen surfaces with a dry cloth but did not feel the need to get the splashes off the range. I cleaned the sink without moving the unstable sink caddy, simply allowing the areas where the caddy rested to be a little dirty. I cleaned the toilet just for good measure. I swept the whole apartment— the parts that were easy to get to. It took 20 or 30 minutes, and I didn’t feel exhausted or put out once.

“Taking the B” goes by other names, like “the 80/20 Rule.” But I like to thinking of a B grade because the memory of doing B schoolwork without breaking a sweat and still learning the material reminds me how little it matters to get most things perfect. You get your B (or even C!), and you’re cleared. Unless you’re worried about getting perfect end-of-term grades, you need never worry about that assignment again. Bs are more than good enough for most purposes. I’d much rather have a B than 1) a zero (which is often the realistic alternative), or 2) an A that costs me twice the time and fills me with anxiety, dread, or self-loathing.

Everything worth doing is not worth doing well. You have limited time and energy— lots of things are worth doing half-assed to get a discount and save some of those precious resources. Cleaning my home is one of those things. I don’t want crap on the counters and I don’t want grit underfoot. I can get that valuable outcome without cleaning all the corners or lifting the caddy. But because I have an ingrained fear of doing things imperfectly, I often struggle to extract the worthwhile stuff from a whole bunch of difficult or time-consuming filler that I consider to be part of getting the A. Perfectionism is just a kind of functional fixedness that keeps me from getting the most out of my resources. I feel honor-bound to clean the house “correctly” instead of seeing the separate cleaning tasks in terms of desired clean end-states.

Taking the B is a way to ease of out of the “nothing less than A” mindset. It doesn’t say working toward a high standard is wrong. It just says take your current standard and aim for the B.

1. “Today” was actually when I wrote this draft, 04/08/2020