The last 10%
What my dad taught me about craftsmanship
A few years ago, my dad came to my place to help me repaint a door.
I learned that we had to first strip the old paint. We started with a paint scraper, which could remove relatively big chunks of paint. But it still took us a while. It turns out, a door feels a lot bigger when I have to scrape every inch of it by hand.
He then switched to a penknife blade to remove the small areas we missed with the scraper. Honestly, I was tired by this point.
“Didn’t we remove most of the paint already? Can’t we just leave the rest and paint over them?” I asked in Mandarin.
“No, that’s not good enough. The paint will come off.”
Without saying more and with sweat all over his face, he continued to scrape off the old paint, sand the door, and then paint a few new layers.
My dad and mum have been running their small car audio and accessories workshop longer than I have been alive. It was there that I spent most of my school holidays.
I would sometimes watch him install new devices in their customers’ cars. Even though all of the wiring is hidden behind the interior panels and the customers will never see it, he would always manage the wires beautifully. He would carefully strip the wires, connect them tightly with a heat shrink and sometimes solder them, and route them cleanly. If he caught his technicians stuffing the wires and leaving a mess, he would reprimand them.
That the business has been around for 37 years, four more years than I have, is a testament to his craftsmanship (and my mum’s salesmanship).
He is still so meticulous at 66. I suspect he simply loves the craft because he does the same at home. And he does a lot of DIY at home.
“If you’re going to make something, it doesn’t take any more energy —and rarely does it take more money —to make it really great. All it takes is a little more time. Not that much more. And a willingness to persevere until it’s really great.”—Steve Jobs
This is something I’m still working on.
Be it working on website designs or writing essays, I’m often tempted to think they are good enough and ship them. They might be okay but are probably only about 80% there. Recently, I have been pushing myself to refine and improve my work further.
It is hard. The last 10-20% can take as much time as the first 80-90%. For example, I took a week to go through four iterations of a website design and more than two weeks refining the “final” iteration. Revising the copy and generating better images alone took me several days. One of the images I generated looks 99% okay. But the eyes of the person, just a few pixels, were distorted, and the entire photo just didn’t feel right.
When something doesn’t feel right, I get a nagging sensation. But I don’t always know what is wrong exactly. Because of that, I used to sweep this feeling under the rug and move on; I didn’t know what to do!
Now, I try to sit with it and even lean into it.
Something feels off. Why?
What could it be?
What if I try this other thing? Or that? Any difference?
What would X person or brand do instead? Why would they not do what I did?
My cofounder SK has been a helpful critic and thought partner. Sometimes he can articulate what feels wrong; sometimes he can only point out “hints” of what feels off and I’d try to figure it out. Either way, I find it useful to dissect the issue with someone else (which sometimes is ChatGPT).
Taking a step back, the nagging sensation is actually a good sign. When I first started writing or designing or coding, I didn’t even get that feeling. Maybe because my senses were not developed yet. With more practice and feedback, I have become more sensitive to issues.
Perhaps that’s how taste is developed. By leaning into the awkwardness, despite not knowing what is wrong and what to fix. By asking questions and trying different things, even if most would fail. By taking a bit more time and persevering until it feels great.