The single greatest key to happiness in data management (and life!) is to seek success and not perfection. A corollary to that could be "Try it and see what happens."

Part of my work with clients is helping them make decisions about business rules and business processes; helping to answer the question: "How are we going to use the system?" Often there are no absolute right and wrong answers about how to do a given thing. And so typically my advice is, "Let's try [X], and see what happens."

Let's face it, for most of us in association mgt, if we choose to do X and it doesn't work, no one dies. Trying something that ultimately doesn't work may be frustrating, and perhaps a bit time-consuming, but it's not the end of the world. And likely we will have learned something in the process.

We might not be able to predict how our members and customers will react to a certain process or rule. The only way to find out is to try and see what happens! It's all part of seeking success and not perfection.