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“Have no fear of perfection—you’ll never reach it.” ~Salvador Dalí
We live in a world that worships polish.
Perfect photos on Instagram. Seamless podcasts with no awkward pauses. Articles that read like they’ve passed through a dozen editors.
And now, with AI tools that can produce mistake-free writing in seconds, the bar feels even higher. Machines can generate flawless sentences, perfect grammar, and shiny ideas on demand. Meanwhile, I’m over here second-guessing a paragraph, rewriting the same sentence six different ways, and still wondering if “Best” or “Warmly” is the less awkward email sign-off.
It’s easy to feel like our messy, human work doesn’t measure up.
I’ve fallen into that trap plenty of times. I’ve delayed publishing because “it’s not ready.” I’ve rerecorded podcasts because I stumbled on a word. I’ve tweaked and reformatted things no one else would even notice.
Perfectionism whispers: If it isn’t flawless, don’t share it.
But over time, I’ve learned something else: imperfection is not a liability. It’s the whole point.
A Table Full of Flaws
One of the best lessons I’ve ever learned about imperfection came not from writing or technology, but from woodworking.
About a decade ago, I decided to build a dining table. I spent hours measuring, cutting, sanding, and staining. I wanted it to be perfect.
But here’s the truth about woodworking: nothing ever turns out perfect. Ever.
That table looks solid from across the room. But if you step closer, you’ll notice the flaws. The board I mismeasured by a quarter inch. The corner I over-sanded. The stain that didn’t set evenly.
At first, I saw those flaws as failures. Proof that I wasn’t skilled enough, patient enough, or careful enough.
But then something surprising happened. My wife walked into the room, saw the finished table, and said she loved it. She didn’t see the mistakes. She saw something that had been made with love and care.
And slowly, I began to see it that way, too.
That table isn’t just furniture. It’s proof of effort, process, and patience. It carries my fingerprints, my sweat, and my imperfect humanity.
And here’s the kicker: it’s way more fulfilling than anything mass-produced or manufactured as machine-perfect.
Why Imperfection Connects Us
That table taught me something AI never could: flaws tell a story.
Machines can produce flawless outputs, but they can’t create meaning. They can’t replicate the pride of sanding wood with your own hands or the laughter around a table that wobbled for the first month.
Imperfections are what make something ours. They carry our fingerprints, quirks, and lived experiences.
In contrast, perfection is sterile. It might be impressive, but it rarely feels alive.
Think about the things that move us most—a friend’s vulnerable story, a laugh that turns into a snort, a talk where the speaker loses their train of thought but recovers with honesty. When was the last time you felt closest to someone? Chances are, it wasn’t when they were polished, it was when they were real. Those moments connect us precisely because they are imperfect.
They remind us we’re not alone in our flaws.
The AI Contrast
AI dazzles us because it never stutters. It never doubts. It never sends an awkward text or spills coffee on its keyboard. AI can do flawless. But flawless isn’t the same as meaningful.
But here’s what it doesn’t do:
- It doesn’t feel the mix of pride and embarrassment in showing someone your wobbly table.
- It doesn’t understand the joy of cooking a meal that didn’t go exactly to plan.
- It doesn’t know what it’s like to hit “publish” while your stomach churns with nerves, only to get a message later that says, “This made me feel less alone.”
Flawlessness might be a machine’s strength. But humanity is ours.
The very things I used to try to hide—the quirks, the rough edges, the imperfections—are the things that make my work worth sharing.
A Different Kind of Readiness
I used to think I needed to wait until something was “ready.” The blog post polished just right. The podcast that’s perfectly edited. The message refined until it couldn’t possibly be criticized.
But I’ve learned that readiness is a mirage. It’s often just perfectionism in disguise.
The truth is, most of the things that resonated most with people—my most-downloaded podcast episode, the articles that readers emailed me about months later—were the ones I almost didn’t share. The ones that felt too messy, too vulnerable, too real.
And yet, those are the ones people said, “This is exactly what I needed to hear.”
Not the flawless ones. The human ones.
How We Can Embrace Imperfection
I’m not saying it’s easy. Perfectionism is sneaky. It wears the disguise of “high standards” or “being thorough.”
Here’s what I’ve found helps me. Not rules, but reminders I keep returning to:
Share before you feel ready.If it feels 80% good enough, release it. The last 20% is often just endless polishing.
Reframe mistakes as stories.My table’s flaws? Now they’re conversation starters. What mistakes of yours might carry meaning, too?
Notice where imperfection builds connection.The things that make people feel closer to you usually aren’t the shiny parts. They’re the honest ones.
The Bigger Picture
We live in a culture obsessed with speed, optimization, and polish. AI accelerates that pressure. It tempts us to compete on machine terms: flawless, instant, infinite.
But that’s not the game we’re meant to play.
Our advantage—our only real advantage—is that we’re human. We bring nuance, empathy, humor, vulnerability, and lived experience.
Robots don’t laugh until they snort. They don’t ugly cry during Pixar movies. They don’t mismeasure wood or forget to use the wood glue and build a table that their partner loves anyway.
You do. I do. That’s the point.
So maybe we don’t need to sand down every rough edge. Perhaps we don’t need to hide every flaw.
Because when the world is flooded with flawless, machine-polished work, the imperfect, human things will stand out.
And those are the things people will remember.
About Chris Cage
Chris Cage is the author of Still Human: Staying Sane, Productive, and Fully You in the Age of AI. He is a product manager, writer, and mental health advocate. He writes at The Mental Lens blog and hosts the podcast Through the Mental Lens, where he explores the intersection of productivity, mental well-being, and technology. Learn more and subscribe to the newsletter at TheMentalLens.com. You can also follow Chris on Instagram, Goodreads, and Amazon.
