"Do your best" can be a bad thing to say - just perfectionism?

I ran across this today and it's interesting, but I think they left out the most important one.

http://lifehacker.com/10-things-to-stop-saying-to-your-kids-and-what-to-say-474962146

For us, the biggest issue has been perfectionism and effort.  "Just do your best," is a phrase intended to take the pressure out of achievement or results, but it hasn't been effective in our lives, personally, and from some psychologists' writings, I have learned we are not alone.

For M, it sounds like a tall order.  What is her best?  Is she sure she did her best?  What if she could have done better?  These are just a few of the questions that were her response to the dreaded phrase.  Instead of taking pressure off, we seemed to have piled on anxiety and complexity and confusion.

The bigger question about the dreaded phrase, however, is "should she always do her best?"  This is a question she would never ask as a compliant and perfectionistic and literal kid.  Instead, it is my question of her.  It is also my question for others.

Is it really important to do your best in every subject all the time?  If so, prioritizing is a non-issue.  Should you skip gymnastics practice to work on a paper for school the next day?  Of course not!  If you must always do your best, that must mean in gymnastics and schoolwork, right?!

Here's another example.  In cooking and baking, must you always do your best to measure exactly?  Baking is an area I actually measure ingredients, but honestly, my idea of perfection in cooking is not wasting ingredients.  If it calls for a certain kind of greens, I use whatever lettuce-like food we have in the fridge.  It calls for provolone cheese, but I have cheddar in the fridge, so cheddar is what we use!  Besides, when you're cooking, it doesn't have to rise, so measuring there doesn't mean as much to me.

The last example brings up yet another question.  How do you define your best?  In the cooking example, is it getting the most portions out of the meal?  Maybe it's using only what you have in the cupboards to avoid wasting food or to stay within your grocery budget at the end of the month.  Maybe it's getting the best flavor.  Then again, whose opinion about the best flavor do you use in that case?  It's not a simple statement, after all.

In cases like those, I would argue that "good enough" is a more appropriate approach than "do your best."  It is less confusing, and everyone still eats.  That is good enough for me.

I would go further, however, and say that good enough exists in many realms.  I doubt there is an adult out there who does their best at everything they do every time.  Why would we put that expectation on our children?  I'm not suggesting that people use this phrase intentionally to cause distress, but I think it's a poor one and should be limited to use in the same places we use phrases like "gee whiz" and the like - it's illustrative of a place in time and the culture of that time.  Other than that, I'm all for eliminating it.

Have a great weekend of "good enough" times!