I am a PHP programmer with 1 year of experience. As I am just starting my career, I am learning a lot of things now. I can say I am a little bit of a perfectionist.When I am assigned a problem I start off by Googling. Then, even when I find a solution, I keep trying for a better one until I find 2-3 options. Then I start learning it and choose the best performing solution.Even though I am learning a lot, this process gets me labeled as a low performer.My questions:  As a novice, should I continue to use this learning process and not worry about my performance?  Should I focus more on my performance and less on how the code performs?
Programmer performance
performance;junior programmer
If you have some experienced people around you, you may want to ask them if they could give you an estimate of how long something should take as I can imagine many things in software having solutions ranging from 2 hours to 2 years and lots of things in between that depending on resources different options may make sense.  If someone tells you that something should take a few hours and you've spent a few weeks without getting it done, this could be a sign that you may need more help in getting things done within a reasonable deadline.  You may want to read about a Duct Tape Programmer as an example of this kind of role model.If you take your perfectionism too far, it could well sabotage your career.  At the same time, if kept in moderation and you do really improve on a regular basis then it isn't a bad strength to have if you can see it that way.