And cut. Print. We’re moving on. That was perfect.

My favorite people to work with are the ones who accept the reality that nobody will ever notice.

Not our customers, not our coworkers, not strangers on the internet, nobody. Whatever minor imperfection is blocking us from moving forward right now, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.

It’s like the film director who takes one shot and yells:

And cut. Print. We’re moving on. That was perfect.

Deep down, most people crave that kind of leader. They’re not interested in working for some perfectionist dictator who always goes the extra mile to make everything twenty percent better. Leaders who optimize every task within an inch of its life are draining to be around.

Not to mention, everything always takes three weeks longer than it should.

No, what’s ideal is focusing on having a good, lean process, getting something in the can, iterating quickly, and feeling satisfying along the way. The results are out of our hands.

Now, if this sounds like a disconcerting indifference toward quality control, you’re a hundred percent right.

But so what? Quality is for amateurs. Our society decided long ago that good doesn’t matter. Making things look nice is nice, and if we care enough to do so, that’s our prerogative.

But since nobody will ever notice anyway, why not live stress free? Why put undue pressure on ourselves to deliver amazing work all of the time?

I remember a speech from my favorite animated movie.

Butters, who’s depicted as the naive, optimistic, and gullible character, goes against type when helping his friends understand how modern streaming services work. Here’s the transcript.

Media companies don’t care. They’re gonna take everything they can get. Everyone knows, at the end of the day, there’s only gonna be, like, three streaming services, so they, like, everyone, just want to have their content on their stream and get bought out? They don’t care how good anything is. The people who made all the deals, they don’t care, because they’re all gonna get fired anyway.

And everyone working at this streaming service is now working over at that streaming service. No one cares what goes on in it. All these companies are paying people too much money while actually devaluing the artists, and creating a streaming business that is driving content, instead of content driving the business. Now we’ve got these huge companies, but all they’re delivering is junk. And if you look at it, only about a fourth of what’s on most streaming services is really worth it anyway.

Butters reminds us that whatever we’re creating in this world, it’s not about the tiny details. It’s only about the big picture.

Nobody will ever notice. Whatever flaw we fear being exposed for, it’s going to go right over most people’s heads.

This isn’t cynicism, fatalism, carelessness or disrespect. This is math.

Nature magazine recently did a study to learn out how many thoughts the average person experiences each waking day. Their research estimates it’s over six thousand daily cognitions. Six thousand.

Combine that statistic with the fact that each human being is also estimated to encounter about ten thousand advertisements every day, the probability of getting noticed is effectively zero.

And so, to assume nobody will ever notice is not an absurd or implausible estimation. It’s quite liberating.

Now we can let go of our attachments and assumptions and expectations, and just do the work. Love the process so much that the product is of secondary concern. Be willing to indulge our fancies without stopping to question them.

The only thing that counts in this business is giving our idea a chance, shipping something we’re proud of into the world, hoping for good outcomes, and then getting back to work to do it again.

Not to mention, being grateful every day for the opportunity to do it.

That’s my version of, and cut. Print. We’re moving on. That was perfect.

What if quality was for amateurs and there was a bigger picture you were missing?