Perfectionism is stopping me from starting my own youtube channel and share with the world what I see valuable. (And also made me abandon my old channel that had somewhat 20k subscribers, but I decided there were those who did it better, so...) I'm glad you managed this, I hope I also will some day 😌
Great video. I am currently reading the book, The Anxious Perfectionist, and It's crazy how much the book is describing my condition with perfectionism. It's a short, great book!
I have been painting in watercolor for a few years and most of that time I was very detailed oriented (read all the art books, watched 1000s of videos, etc) and wanted all my paintings "technically perfect"...but I felt too constrained and frustrated with the rules and "proper technique". So I started experimenting with ABSTRACT art where there are no constraints and I could just throw some paint on the paper and just "loosen up". Long story short...I love to paint and its no longer a tedious, frustration. 10 people can look at my art and see 10 different things and they appreciate my art. I let the viewer complete the painting. Before doing abstract art, everything had to look just right the people, buildings, landscapes...all had to be convincing and everyone looking at it would see basically the same thing. So for me as an artist, perfection constrained my ability to EVOLVE. Keep up your good work. I love how you weave technology with everyday life and not let technology rule your life. Very impressed.
An interesting perspective - thanks for sharing! I'm glad you've gotten past the "technically perfect" stage. I suppose you do have to learn the rules in order to break them, but working on something you enjoy and don't find tedious is always more important than achieving technical accuracy, at least in the arts. Letting the viewer complete the painting allows for each viewer to get more meaning and appreciation. Thank you! :-)
perfectionism is the self censor ship of your creativity and with that creativity missing you come an obedient compliant consumer to the point that devs pay for a freaking text editor. if you on the other hand use that creativity you might find more and or other ways of things to get done what you want to do. looking forward to the wallpaper vid
Hello bread, a big greeting from Argentina, thank you so much for all your videos, your channel is gold... I hope and i know you will archive great things 🙋♂
I once had a boss who would lament how perfectionism was a disease. But if I ever did anything imperfect, he'd get upset..... like really upset. That relationship didn't last long. #BossOfTheYear
7:34 Ah yes, a familiar point found in the Cult of Done Manifesto. "Laugh at perfection; it's boring and keeps you from being done." This is definitely something I still find myself struggling with, particularly in programming. I forgot where I heard this, and even forget if it's true, but I once heard a story of a very skilled potter. This potter, also happened to be a teacher of pottery, decided to conduct an experiment with their class. The experiment was to split the class into two groups. Group A was told their grade in the potter's class was directly dependent on the collective weight of all the pots they created by the end of the class. Group B was told their grade in the class was directly dependent on the single pot with the highest quality they could produce (umm, pot as in the clay container, not the other kind of pot lol). Well, by the end of the class, the skilled potter found that Group A, despite not being graded on quality at all, had far higher-quality pots than Group B. The reason was that Group A spent all their time quickly and dirtily making pots whereas Group B spent their entire time researching and waited until the last day before attempting to make their pot.
Whether it's a true story or not, the message is what counts :-) That also illustrates that planning only goes so far. I like to rely on planning, but planning only counts when it leads to action. Thank you for taking the time to share that!!
Im pretty drunk right now and your channel is just amazing. I learned very much from your videos alone and you are just very relatable and seem very wise/intelligent for me. Atleast for me as a 17 year old. Thank you very much ✌️
I appreciate that! I'm really glad you've learned something. I'm likely not very wise overall, but nice of you to say - I do enjoy sharing advice for how I've solved or gotten past issues in my life :^)
I found that the best way is to set some proper boundaries. To go with the video editing example, even though you don't edit I still bet that you want to get the video "perfect". I for sure would feel that. Doing that you have something finished, sure you could end up rerecording it if needed but you still "finished" something. Just getting millage in what ever you're doing shifts your focus from the "thing" to the process. Then you can have the unbound perfectionist mindset about your process since that wouldn't stop you from making things. So these boundaries should just get you to make more of what ever you're doing. I guess it's a form of the "fail fast" idea. As for the social aspect of perfectionism, I got nothing. As a fellow arch user I go into the woods and the deer sure don't care about perfectionism 😂
Yeah I definitely feel the need for videos to be perfect, and often I will have to stop myself from doing more takes. But as you said, seeing a "finished" product is helpful, even if it's not perfect, it's done. That's an interesting comparison with fail fast, I see what you mean. Lmao Arch users in the woods, I think we've managed to make a new stereotype!
that mindset is what made me quit 3d modelling a few years ago, i was never proud of anything i made and to this day i kind of regret it because i could've gotten really far if i was still practicing. at least after quitting i got into programming, so not everything is bad. i feel like it's different because a program doesn't have any "beauty", it just works, so luckily that mindset didn't really affect programming as well
Hey you can still go back to it, if you get the chance to! It might be worth keeping in mind that if you were to show someone else what you made, they would likely be proud. We are our own worst critics. It's good there was some silver lining for you, at least :^)
I have refrained from 3d modelling because of "perfectionism" -- positioning a vertex 0.001px off its ideal position would be a terrible offense to commit, even if I have no idea at all where its "ideal position" should be in the first place. Sadly, my first years of serious programming made the mindset worse for me...
I personally think perfectionism is good, as long as it is contained unchallenged and unchained perfectionism is just going to either cause the person being perfectionist to be miserable or it will cause the project to never be finished, at least that's my experience limited resources like time and money do help with that, if you're on a deadline and you only had an hour a day to dedicate to something or a fixed budget of like 50$/€/£, then you'll get creative and work with these limitations. A thing that goes hand in hand with that is the sunk cost fallacy, just because you have sunken x amount of whatever resource into something doesn't mean it's worth it to push through with it at any cost. for me personally, I tried to do youtube this year and it just didn't work out. I would have been able to make the amount of videos that I wanted to make, but the cost wouldn't have been worth it. Me from a couple of years ago wouldn't have realised, but I made these mistakes and I found out what approach works for me and what amount of perfectionism I can reliably work with ...and when it's best to quit, to not destroy myself 😂 P.S.: I thought I had left a comment on this one a week ago, maybe technology failed or youtubes automod got me for some reason
Thanks for sending another comment, automod trips for no discernible reason, sometimes. "as long as it is contained" makes sense, it's definitely worth it to strive for the best, as long as you can also be aware that true, complete perfection is often impossible. Limitations are super helpful, they force creativity and thinking outside the box as well. Overall great advice and suggestions. I just clicked on your channel since you mentioned you make videos, you have insanely clean production quality - I can see the perfectionism in action :-)
@@BreadOnPenguins thanks, while I am proud of what I have produced over the years, I personally wouldn't call it "insanely clean" (I know that's probably personal insecurities talking but we're running with it) maybe I'm gonna have time to do what I've wanted to do this year in the next, maybe I won't. I'm not letting perfectionism stress me anymore
The best advice I can tell anyone is take it one day at a time, one step at a time. As long as you keep moving forward, you will be amazed at the progress looking back. This goes for anything in life. It's about the journey.
That's fair, especially if you're around others who are constantly out-performing you - it's unfortunately very easy to go from looking up to others' work to being jealous or feeling like you can't achieve anything. Work on your goals regardless, and try to be satisfied with your personal best - the more small things you achieve, the more you'll trust that you are able to do things :)
Hello from Romania! I like your presentations very much. I make a suggestion for you: Can you make a video about commands that you use to search specific text in your bash scripts? How you isolate text to use in variables in bash scripts. I hope you understand my english. Stefan from Romania :)
Hello! :) Sure, as in splitting text with grep, awk, or sed? If that's what you're referring to, those are all topics on the list to eventually cover. Thank you for commenting!
This has been a big problem for me. I code and do many projects for fun, but very rarely I manage to actually conclude one, let alone be satisfied with it. I pretty much always trap myself in premature optimization, and end up completely loosing the original scope of the project, and just abandon it. That said, I still do enjoy the journey very much, but never being able to call something "finished" is kinda annoying
Maybe it could help to set specific time limits to finish a project, realistic ones but still tight enough that you're forced to plan out in advance each step of the way. At least you're able to enjoy the journey, that counts for something!
Windows 10 EOL will be October of 2025, so at that point, you could suggest going over to something like Linux Mint or Ubuntu (even better if you set it up for them)! Older hardware will likely either be unable to install Win 11 or it will install but lag or have issues, so easy opportunity to suggest Linux. Or if anyone you know already does care about privacy/security :-) Just be prepared to be the resident IT guy for anyone you convince to go to Linux!
Bread, you’re just straight-up wrong. I’m perfect, and the way I do things is... pure perfection. My life is perfect; I have lots of friends, and perfection is a key part of my life. I mean, what do you even do with your life if you're not like me? Huh? I wouldn’t have commented on your video if I hadn’t felt so impacted by your imperfection, you know? It just grossed me out.
For sure, not everyone with a degree knows better! I do respect when someone has put effort into studying specific programming or sysadmin topics though. That said I'm very anti-college/uni overall - will be its own video at some point
This is quickly becoming one of my favourite new channels
Thank you, glad to hear! :-)
Yes, very authentic
Finally, Open source advice
Pre compiled 🗿
LOL
Perfectionism is stopping me from starting my own youtube channel and share with the world what I see valuable. (And also made me abandon my old channel that had somewhat 20k subscribers, but I decided there were those who did it better, so...)
I'm glad you managed this, I hope I also will some day 😌
You can do it! Get back to it once you have the chance, it's always worth a try :-)
They say perfection is the enemy of good. Lovely take on such a difficult topic!
Very true! Thank you :-)
Great video. I am currently reading the book, The Anxious Perfectionist, and It's crazy how much the book is describing my condition with perfectionism. It's a short, great book!
Thank you for mentioning that book, I'll have to check it out!
I have been painting in watercolor for a few years and most of that time I was very detailed oriented (read all the art books, watched 1000s of videos, etc) and wanted all my paintings "technically perfect"...but I felt too constrained and frustrated with the rules and "proper technique". So I started experimenting with ABSTRACT art where there are no constraints and I could just throw some paint on the paper and just "loosen up". Long story short...I love to paint and its no longer a tedious, frustration. 10 people can look at my art and see 10 different things and they appreciate my art. I let the viewer complete the painting. Before doing abstract art, everything had to look just right the people, buildings, landscapes...all had to be convincing and everyone looking at it would see basically the same thing. So for me as an artist, perfection constrained my ability to EVOLVE. Keep up your good work. I love how you weave technology with everyday life and not let technology rule your life. Very impressed.
An interesting perspective - thanks for sharing! I'm glad you've gotten past the "technically perfect" stage. I suppose you do have to learn the rules in order to break them, but working on something you enjoy and don't find tedious is always more important than achieving technical accuracy, at least in the arts. Letting the viewer complete the painting allows for each viewer to get more meaning and appreciation.
Thank you! :-)
loving your content, bread!
Thanks!! :^)
Wow, never had perfectionism in mind from that perspective. Thanks for your sharing of thoughts.
Glad to share a new perspective then, no problem!
I needed to hear this about perfectionism, thank you so much. Your channel is wonderfull
What a nice comment to see - you're welcome, and thank you for checking out my channel! :-)
perfectionism is the self censor ship of your creativity and with that creativity missing you come an obedient compliant consumer to the point that devs pay for a freaking text editor. if you on the other hand use that creativity you might find more and or other ways of things to get done what you want to do.
looking forward to the wallpaper vid
That's true, and yeah paying for a text editor is insane. There's no rule saying that creativity must result in perfection. :-)
Hello bread, a big greeting from Argentina, thank you so much for all your videos, your channel is gold... I hope and i know you will archive great things 🙋♂
Hello, thank you for checking out my videos and commenting! :-) I appreciate it, I hope so too!
Cool, this is becoming one of my best channels on youtube to enjoy...
Thank you! :-)
I once had a boss who would lament how perfectionism was a disease. But if I ever did anything imperfect, he'd get upset..... like really upset. That relationship didn't last long.
#BossOfTheYear
Gotta love hearing one thing and seeing another.. glad that didn't last too long!
Another great advise from a great TH-cam channel. Keep up the good work.
Thank you! Will do :-)
I love you Bread !!!! You rock
Aw thanks! :-)
Learned about your channel from DT. Subbed! Great content, keep it up.
Thanks so much for checking out my channel and subbing! Will do :-)
7:34 Ah yes, a familiar point found in the Cult of Done Manifesto. "Laugh at perfection; it's boring and keeps you from being done." This is definitely something I still find myself struggling with, particularly in programming.
I forgot where I heard this, and even forget if it's true, but I once heard a story of a very skilled potter. This potter, also happened to be a teacher of pottery, decided to conduct an experiment with their class. The experiment was to split the class into two groups. Group A was told their grade in the potter's class was directly dependent on the collective weight of all the pots they created by the end of the class. Group B was told their grade in the class was directly dependent on the single pot with the highest quality they could produce (umm, pot as in the clay container, not the other kind of pot lol).
Well, by the end of the class, the skilled potter found that Group A, despite not being graded on quality at all, had far higher-quality pots than Group B. The reason was that Group A spent all their time quickly and dirtily making pots whereas Group B spent their entire time researching and waited until the last day before attempting to make their pot.
Whether it's a true story or not, the message is what counts :-)
That also illustrates that planning only goes so far. I like to rely on planning, but planning only counts when it leads to action. Thank you for taking the time to share that!!
Im pretty drunk right now and your channel is just amazing. I learned very much from your videos alone and you are just very relatable and seem very wise/intelligent for me. Atleast for me as a 17 year old. Thank you very much ✌️
I appreciate that! I'm really glad you've learned something. I'm likely not very wise overall, but nice of you to say - I do enjoy sharing advice for how I've solved or gotten past issues in my life :^)
Thank you for the video, very relevant to work today haha
Gotta keep humble! :D
No problem! True :-)
new sub in here
like the way you give advices
thx for sharing these type of vids keep it up
Hey thanks for subbing and checking out my vids! Will do :^)
You where not wrong,
You just changed your perspective.
Fair
I found that the best way is to set some proper boundaries. To go with the video editing example, even though you don't edit I still bet that you want to get the video "perfect". I for sure would feel that. Doing that you have something finished, sure you could end up rerecording it if needed but you still "finished" something. Just getting millage in what ever you're doing shifts your focus from the "thing" to the process. Then you can have the unbound perfectionist mindset about your process since that wouldn't stop you from making things. So these boundaries should just get you to make more of what ever you're doing. I guess it's a form of the "fail fast" idea.
As for the social aspect of perfectionism, I got nothing. As a fellow arch user I go into the woods and the deer sure don't care about perfectionism 😂
Yeah I definitely feel the need for videos to be perfect, and often I will have to stop myself from doing more takes. But as you said, seeing a "finished" product is helpful, even if it's not perfect, it's done.
That's an interesting comparison with fail fast, I see what you mean.
Lmao Arch users in the woods, I think we've managed to make a new stereotype!
Love this channel.
Thank you so much!
Thanks for advice!
Love your content
No problem - thanks! :-)
that mindset is what made me quit 3d modelling a few years ago, i was never proud of anything i made and to this day i kind of regret it because i could've gotten really far if i was still practicing. at least after quitting i got into programming, so not everything is bad. i feel like it's different because a program doesn't have any "beauty", it just works, so luckily that mindset didn't really affect programming as well
Hey you can still go back to it, if you get the chance to! It might be worth keeping in mind that if you were to show someone else what you made, they would likely be proud. We are our own worst critics.
It's good there was some silver lining for you, at least :^)
I have refrained from 3d modelling because of "perfectionism" -- positioning a vertex 0.001px off its ideal position would be a terrible offense to commit, even if I have no idea at all where its "ideal position" should be in the first place. Sadly, my first years of serious programming made the mindset worse for me...
Bad day but this helped. Love the nature behind
Aw, I'm glad to hear it helped at least. Hope your day tmrw is better!
i relate 100%
I have to say I really like your mind set Bread. Off I go to send this to people I know whom this might help. PS, you are butifull
Thank you!! :-)
I’m just getting into ricing … and that’s surely a perfectionist’s dream or nightmare.
You have a point..
New sub here! I truly appreciate the transparency.
Hey thanks for stopping by and subbing! Glad to hear, that's one of my goals with this channel :-)
This would probably not work for everyone, but what steered me away from the perfectionist mindset is getting into punk music.
Interesting! Maybe I'll listen to punk a bit more.
thanks for the advice. :-)
No problem! Thanks for checking out the vid
I personally think perfectionism is good, as long as it is contained
unchallenged and unchained perfectionism is just going to either cause the person being perfectionist to be miserable or it will cause the project to never be finished, at least that's my experience
limited resources like time and money do help with that, if you're on a deadline and you only had an hour a day to dedicate to something or a fixed budget of like 50$/€/£, then you'll get creative and work with these limitations. A thing that goes hand in hand with that is the sunk cost fallacy, just because you have sunken x amount of whatever resource into something doesn't mean it's worth it to push through with it at any cost.
for me personally, I tried to do youtube this year and it just didn't work out. I would have been able to make the amount of videos that I wanted to make, but the cost wouldn't have been worth it. Me from a couple of years ago wouldn't have realised, but I made these mistakes and I found out what approach works for me and what amount of perfectionism I can reliably work with
...and when it's best to quit, to not destroy myself 😂
P.S.: I thought I had left a comment on this one a week ago, maybe technology failed or youtubes automod got me for some reason
Thanks for sending another comment, automod trips for no discernible reason, sometimes.
"as long as it is contained" makes sense, it's definitely worth it to strive for the best, as long as you can also be aware that true, complete perfection is often impossible. Limitations are super helpful, they force creativity and thinking outside the box as well. Overall great advice and suggestions.
I just clicked on your channel since you mentioned you make videos, you have insanely clean production quality - I can see the perfectionism in action :-)
@@BreadOnPenguins thanks, while I am proud of what I have produced over the years, I personally wouldn't call it "insanely clean" (I know that's probably personal insecurities talking but we're running with it)
maybe I'm gonna have time to do what I've wanted to do this year in the next, maybe I won't. I'm not letting perfectionism stress me anymore
The best advice I can tell anyone is take it one day at a time, one step at a time. As long as you keep moving forward, you will be amazed at the progress looking back. This goes for anything in life. It's about the journey.
That's very good advice - thanks for mentioning. "About the journey" gets told off as just a cliche, but it is genuinely true.
Do it the best you can, and if you started it, then finish it and move to the next. Over time, it's easier.
Good suggestion. I've found setting a (realistic) time limit to finish something can be helpful.
Thanks for sharing. Also do you plan on uploading videos to peertube as well? (I know Luke Smith had his own instance)
I might eventually!
Perfect!
Lol!
What is it with GNU/Linux youtubers and life advice in the woods? :D anyway love your videos!
Free and open-source woods ;^)
Thank you!
I'm just opposite of that thinking, I think I can't do anything and others can do anything better than me..
That's fair, especially if you're around others who are constantly out-performing you - it's unfortunately very easy to go from looking up to others' work to being jealous or feeling like you can't achieve anything.
Work on your goals regardless, and try to be satisfied with your personal best - the more small things you achieve, the more you'll trust that you are able to do things :)
penguins can get "drunk" from eating a type of algae that grows on the ice, which makes them stumble around and act strangely
Penguin catnip, maybe! That's funny
Hello from Romania! I like your presentations very much. I make a suggestion for you: Can you make a video about commands that you use to search specific text in your bash scripts? How you isolate text to use in variables in bash scripts. I hope you understand my english. Stefan from Romania :)
Hello! :)
Sure, as in splitting text with grep, awk, or sed? If that's what you're referring to, those are all topics on the list to eventually cover.
Thank you for commenting!
Deadlines, in my experience, is the solution to perfectionism :D
Good point! Set your own if needed, too :^)
This has been a big problem for me.
I code and do many projects for fun, but very rarely I manage to actually conclude one, let alone be satisfied with it.
I pretty much always trap myself in premature optimization, and end up completely loosing the original scope of the project, and just abandon it.
That said, I still do enjoy the journey very much, but never being able to call something "finished" is kinda annoying
Maybe it could help to set specific time limits to finish a project, realistic ones but still tight enough that you're forced to plan out in advance each step of the way. At least you're able to enjoy the journey, that counts for something!
I find this valuable. Bread! You shoukd start a podcast
Glad to hear! Maybe at some point - I'd have to come up with an hour of topics for each episode, could be fun though
. ...is this the Hyprland experience video? . ...properly applied perfectionism unixporn /r.
more forest videos like this por favor :)
Will do! My fav type of vid to make :^)
How do you get friends and family to try out Linux? Could use a few ideas😊
Windows 10 EOL will be October of 2025, so at that point, you could suggest going over to something like Linux Mint or Ubuntu (even better if you set it up for them)! Older hardware will likely either be unable to install Win 11 or it will install but lag or have issues, so easy opportunity to suggest Linux. Or if anyone you know already does care about privacy/security :-) Just be prepared to be the resident IT guy for anyone you convince to go to Linux!
"Thoughts Below the Kernel"
That's a good name idea
Bread, you’re just straight-up wrong. I’m perfect, and the way I do things is... pure perfection. My life is perfect; I have lots of friends, and perfection is a key part of my life. I mean, what do you even do with your life if you're not like me? Huh? I wouldn’t have commented on your video if I hadn’t felt so impacted by your imperfection, you know? It just grossed me out.
Hm.. if your life is perfection, this means you have the perfect Linux rice... I'm jealous 😔
Degree dosnt mean that somebody knows better. I dont know anybody who has learn something about linux in schools, nobody :D
For sure, not everyone with a degree knows better! I do respect when someone has put effort into studying specific programming or sysadmin topics though.
That said I'm very anti-college/uni overall - will be its own video at some point
Is that bear country?
Yes, though uncommon. A bit further out and they're regulars :-)
6660 / 6666 We are close!
Aw, I didn't catch a screenshot or anything haha
HDR+ again... NOOOO!
I gotta start recording on a blackberry or something, it's already lowest settings possible to keep file size low lmao
Excellent deepfake as always Luke
💯