The Cult of Done Manifseto
This post originally appeared September 15, 2011 on BetterProjects.net
I love finishing something. Being able to check that item off my list is an awesome feeling. I’m a huge fan of the Inbox Zero concept because of this. This is why items like the Cult of Done Manifesto makes me so happy. For those who don’t want to click the link (although I suggest you do for the cool poster), here is the short text of the manifesto:
- There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- There is no editing stage.
- Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
- Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
- The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
- Once you’re done you can throw it away.
- Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
- People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
- Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
- Destruction is a variant of done.
- If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
- Done is the engine of more.
Point #2 is by far my favorite of this chart. Its freeing. I know my PM friends get frustrated with me when I say a task is ‘pretty much done’. This isn’t a situation where I’m trying to get them off my back about the status of a task, but a way of saying that its as done as I know how to make it. It is an acceptance of the large amount of ambiguity in life.
Point #4 just makes me laugh.
Point #10 is so true. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have a new task that looks exactly like the one you just failed at, this time to do it correctly, but it does mean the original task is done.
Point #12 is pretty much this entire blog. :-D