Whenever you think you are right—or ready—it helps to tell yourself: “Not quite.”
Not quite. At least, not yet.
That brief hesitation, that refusal to rush certainty, can save you a great deal of embarrassment. It is far better to be corrected in the privacy of your room or office than to be corrected publicly—before stakeholders, peers, or the world at large.
Saying “not quite” is not insecurity. It is restraint.
It is the space between confidence and overconfidence.
Before going public, you test the prototype once more. And if you do choose to go public early, you align your expectations with reality: it may not work as cleanly, or as brilliantly, as you imagined.
This posture is humility.
Be humble rather than waiting to be humbled.
Structure Before Spectacle
Many of us remember moments in school when we were asked a question and instinctively shifted into creative mode. We produced an answer that felt original—perhaps even inspired. Then the teacher asked a quiet but decisive question:
“Where did you get this from?”
A few marks were deducted.
Someone who does not want to grow resents the teacher.
Someone who wants to grow understands what just happened.
Every discipline—mathematics, engineering, medicine, law, art—is governed by structure.
Creativity is not prohibited, but it is constrained. A creative solution may work, but a more important question always follows:
Is it the optimal solution?
Does it move smoothly across concepts, or does it fight them?
Does it reduce friction—or introduce hidden complexity?
This is not an argument against creativity. It is an argument against creativity that refuses to be audited.
One of the most effective learning habits I have developed over time is this:
Never get too excited when you discover a solution.
Instead, return to the standard reference. Study the canonical approach. Compare flows of thought. Then decide whether to refine your solution, merge it with the established one, or abandon it entirely.
You may have reached the correct answer—but the path you took may still be inefficient, brittle, or unnecessarily complex.
In mature disciplines, how you arrive matters as much as where you arrive.
Crossing the Threshold
At some point in a career, something subtle but irreversible happens.
You reach a threshold where you can recognize an ugly solution the moment you see one.
The rabbit hole may run deep—but not infinitely so. Dig too far, and you begin stepping on your own toes. A convoluted solution may function, but that does not mean it deserves to exist in its current form. Often, it is merely a stepping stone—useful temporarily, but not fit to remain.
This is not a call for perfection. Reality rarely allows for pristine solutions. But skilled practitioners—regardless of field—develop an instinct for when a solution is reasonable and when it is simply too much.
That instinct cannot be taught directly.
It is earned through iteration, failure, and reflection.
Case Study: When “Working” Was Not Enough
I have crossed this threshold myself—by first missing it.
At one point, I built a PowerShell exporter that collected hardware details from hundreds of remote computers across health facilities throughout southern Tanzania, facilities supported under the program I work for. The exporter gathered basic information—RAM sizes, serial numbers, and similar identifiers—and delivered them back to my server.
The data itself was not particularly sensitive. But transport safety is not only about secrecy—it is about assurance. About knowing that what you received is exactly what was sent.
The initial design used an FTP-based approach. It worked. Files arrived. The system did what it was supposed to do.
Later, with distance and experience, I realized how many assumptions that design quietly carried.
- It relied on user accounts and passwords, even though I had restricted them with compensating controls.
- It used raw public IP addresses, lightly obscured but still exposed.
- Data traveled unencrypted, vulnerable to interception or modification without detection.
- The client payload was heavy, requiring additional tools and libraries, increasing operational complexity.
Eventually, I replaced the entire design with an HTTPS-based solution.
The newer approach used API keys instead of user accounts, avoided transmitting passwords entirely, ensured data integrity and authenticity, and sent structured JSON that integrated cleanly with downstream systems. The payload shrank dramatically. The mental model simplified.
The original solution worked.
But it was heavy. Fragile. And unnecessarily risky at scale.
It was not wrong.
It was not quite right.
Security Hindsight (Sidebar)
Security failures are rarely dramatic.
They are usually quiet design decisions that felt reasonable at the time.
What matters is not whether data seems confidential, but whether:
- integrity can be trusted,
- assumptions scale safely,
- and risk is proportional to value.
Mature security thinking is less about fear—and more about removing entire classes of problems.
From Making It Work to Making It Right
This distinction appears everywhere, not just in IT.
A junior assembles components until the system functions.
A senior looks at the same system and asks what can be removed.
They see redundancy, hidden coupling, and assumptions that were never challenged. Not because the junior lacked intelligence—but because judgment matures differently than knowledge.
This is the shift from making things work to making things right.
From cleverness to clarity.
From accumulation to refinement.
The Discipline of “Not Quite”
Saying “not quite” is an act of discipline. It prevents you from mistaking motion for progress, or complexity for depth.
Optimism has its place—but skepticism is what keeps optimism honest. The future follows its own laws. It has never been obligated to honor our enthusiasm.
Scrutinize your ideas—especially the ones you are most proud of. Revisit them with time and distance. Reduce them. Replace them if necessary.
If you do that,
you just might move forward—unscathed.
