The Cult of Done
Getting things done quickly and efficiently is a hard skill to master. So, here are some helpful tips courtesy of Bre Pettis.
- 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.
Overall I think it’s a great list, with some helpful tips. However, I’m not sure I agree with number 10, ‘failure counts as done’. Does it? For example, if I fail a course at school, it’s ‘done’ but I would have to redo it, meaning it’s not done. So does failure really count as done? What do you think of Bre’s list? Check out the rest of Bre’s post, including an illustration of the Done Manifesto.
Failure is done for that moment in time or that version.
If you fail a course at school you don't have to redo it. You can do something else with your life–hopefully something equally as interesting and valuable as taking that course again. Or you can choose to take the course again. While you're trying to decide what course of action to take you are in the state “not knowing.”
If you choose to take the course again this will constitute a new experience, not a continuance of your failure the first time.
To me, the value of the above list is to help you get things done quickly and efficiently so you can move on to the next task.
If failure counts as done, then are we not creating more work and hindering our ability to get other things done?
If I choose not to redo the course, then I have to do something else to make up for it. This means I'm creating more work (whatever I choose to do instead) which would not have existed had I passed the course.
If I do redo the course, then I am taking more time to do something then had I passed the first time. This too creates more work (redoing the course) meaning I can't move on to the next goal.
If I had passed in the first time, it would be done and I could move on to the next challenge. So failure cannot (in my opinion) equal done.