“Your life reflects what you tolerate.”
Tony Robbins
When I first moved and got my car, I missed the aux input from my old stereo. With an aux input, I could plug in my phone, listen to podcasts, and make my commute feel a little more useful. I figured that once I was settled, I would replace the stereo.
Until then, I would make do.
The First Workaround
At first, making do was fine. I listened to the radio and old CDs. When I wanted to listen to podcasts, I shifted that habit to running instead.
That sort of solved my problem – sure I still had podcast listening time, but not during my drive. It also meant all the music and podcasts on my phone were not available in the car, just the same rotation of CDs.
The workaround was acceptable enough…and that’s exactly what I did, I accepted it.
The Better Bad Solution
Later, my dad gave me an FM transmitter. The sound quality was not good, but it was fine. However, it did let me listen to podcasts in the car again, so I accepted it.
The signal dropped sometimes. The volume was low. The experience was not good. But it crossed the threshold of tolerable, so I kept it.
Eventually I found a way to hang the transmitter cable from the visor, which improved the signal a bit. It looked weird, was a little inconvenient but the sound was better than before – though still worse than the real fix.
However that is how it remained, until years later when I purchased a new car that had an aux input and I hooked up a Bluetooth receiver. Finally – good quality, wireless, and easy for my friends to connect their music as well.
The Worst Acceptable Solution
Why didn’t I simply buy a new car stereo? Why did I let things continue the way they were?
Annoying but workable is where bad systems learn to survive.
Because – the system was not broken. If it were broken, I probably would have fixed it. But it was the worst acceptable solution: annoying, but workable enough.
So I adapted around it, accepted it – and just lived with it.
At Work, It Looks Familiar
In my professional life, I’ve seen the same thing – in software, often tech debt. Worse: tech debt that is continually built upon because the small annoyances and inefficiencies slow things down, but don’t stop enough impactful work.
Meanwhile, we know that the tech debt needs to be addressed – though unlike in my situation, unaddressed tech debt gets worse and worse.
Product quality with weird workarounds is another example. Small quality issues become accepted, and can lead to a new, lower normal.
That is the curse: once a solution is barely acceptable, it can become surprisingly hard to replace with a good one.