It's easy to stay perfect when you've never been put to work.Perfection is safe when it sits inside a drawer, untouched by the mess of the real world.Today, while helping someone find a pencil in a crowded workspace, I picked up two.One was perfectly sharp.Its yellow paint was clean and unmarred, the brand name shining clearly on the side, its tip carved into a fine, fragile needle that looked like it had never once touched a sheet of paper.The other was short, slightly uneven, and had been sharpened so many times that it barely looked new.Its wood bore the tiny