How do i stop the perfectionism with textbooks?

Question

I have this problem that whenever i want to dip my toes into a new area of math that I'm either completely new to or have so little knowledge in it, I always go and google "Best books to learn [SUBJECT]" or I go and take a look at the recommendations in r/math

And honestly it's driving me crazy, i spend days making a collection of the "Best" books for that subject and most times, i end up using non and ready what my Uni prof. would say for the given course.

for example, It's been three days that I've been looking for a "Perfect" discrete mathematics books and after 5 days, I have downloaded about 9 pdfs and read non while i could've read a chapter completely.

How do i stop this? how do i stop looking for the Perfect textbook? If i don't do this, i always feel like there's a better textbook out there that i could've read and gained more knowledge while i know that's just a wrong feeling.

I would really really appreciate if you could give me any, absolutely any possible advice to stop this perfectionism

Answer 1

This is more common than you might think. There are a lot of books on every topic, and each one has a different focus, style, and level of technicality. Personally, I don't think there is a perfect book for you (or anybody else). My personal strategy would be something like this:

1. Decide on the level of technicality (with/without proofs, is it a graduate or undergraduate text?) and the sub-topics you are interested in.
2. Look for a book that fulfills the criteria you have set yourself in 1.
3. Accept that it might not be perfect, and go with it.
4. This book will, if you study the topic using this book, eventually become one of your preferred sources (unless it is really bad ;) ). It's like most people do not question the syllabus/style/notation/... of a lecture. Rather the lecture becomes the standard against which they compare other sources on that topic.