The Hidden Cost of Polish
There’s a familiar whisper that sneaks into every builder’s head: just one more tweak.
One more refactor before the push.
One more design flourish before the handover.
One more round of prep before the presentation.
It feels virtuous—who could fault you for wanting your work to shine? But polish is expensive, and the bill is often hidden.
I’ve spent thousands of hours polishing. Some of it was worthwhile, but a terrifying amount was surplus to requirements. I did it because it made me feel good, not because it was required.
Sometimes I liked to think I was a Master Craftsman in my workshop, or an artisan baker perfecting my bread recipe as a golden light reflected off the flour floating in the air.
But I was an idiot sitting at a laptop, wasting time.
The danger of over-polishing is that you’re often refining assumptions that haven’t been tested. You’re sanding down edges no one has even touched. In your imaginary workshop.
By the time you finally share it, you may have spent hours smoothing something the world didn’t need—or worse, missed the chance to learn what it actually wanted.
If you’re building something for customers, validating your assumptions is your number one priority. You should be finding ways to invalidate your guesses sooner rather than later, and polish gets in the way of this.
In code, this looks like over-engineering features before any user feedback. In product work, it’s sinking weeks into pixel-perfect design that collapses once it meets real customers.
The same thing happens outside of code. People polish their CVs for months instead of sending them out. They prepare endlessly for “the right time” to launch a project.
I’ve talked a lot of people down from the ledge of rewriting every aspect of their CV and portfolio, in lieu of getting out there. Many more than I’ve had to push to add missing detail.
Perfection feels safe. But safety isn’t the same as progress.
Putting something out there sooner is the only way to disprove to yourself that your worth depends on an extremely high standard of delivery. As a popular article put it recently, “being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage.”
Investing less time in polish is also a kindness to yourself. Nothing is more demotivating for you or your team than spending time decorating something that no one ever sees.
Rather than asking: Is this perfect?
Try asking: Is this polished enough to learn something?
The goal isn’t to release something embarrassing; it’s to release something testable. With enough fidelity that the feedback you get is useful, but not so much that you’ve bet weeks polishing in the dark.
Polish is a tax on momentum. Pay it sparingly. Invest just enough to keep things moving forward, then let the next iteration carry you further.
Building the rough draft out in the world beats the polished draft in your head every time.