From Seth Godin’s The Dip:

Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, told me, “We knew that Google was going to get better every single day as we worked on it, and we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it. So our feeling was that the later you tried it, the better it was for us because we’d make a better impression with better technology. So we are never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better.”

Sure, there’s a part of me that likes the idea of releasing early and often. However, I think there’s a bit of a perfectionist in me that thinks very much like Brin. I think many engineers and artists probably feel the same way. Sometimes you get so lost in your work and enjoy doing it so much that you are always looking ahead to what it can be. Sometimes, you’ll be 80% of the way there, but will hesitate to show it to anyone until it gets even closer to 100%. I often find myself doing this with various software or writing projects. It took me a long time to bring this blog back in a somewhat publicly presentable form – I kept thinking up new designs and content styles I wanted to include.

Back when I was a long-distance runner in high school, I wouldn’t invite anyone to come see me run at races – even my parents. I knew I was getting better and better as a runner, so the way I saw it, it didn’t matter that they didn’t get to see any of the mid-season stuff. I knew the good stuff was coming – league championships, invitationals, etc. Come back tomorrow. I’ll be better.