A useful term: "Premature Optimization"

My vocabulary term for today is "Premature Optimization." Basically, when you do this you are putting things in order, micro-managing items or perfecting them, before you understand how, or even if, they will ever be used in the future.

Some premature optimization is inevitable. Plans change and render some previous planning useless. A language might be learned extremely well for a trip that never occurred. If we waited till we needed such a skill, it would be too late to acquire it then.

But there are plenty of opportunities to avoid wasting time prematurely perfecting stuff that may never be used.

Better results are often had when a person postpones the final perfection of a project to a time when they can better understand how and by whom it will be used.