The Cult of Done Manifesto

This is in the spirit of the The Knowing-Doing Gap, and wonderfully concise.  I don't agree with everything -- for example, I believe in editing and all forms of iteration.  And pretending you know what your doing when you don't is sometimes necessary, and a good thing to do when failure does little damage, but I hope my surgeon, airplane pilot, or the CEO of AIG aren't just pretending (although I suspect that they are faking it at AIG)! 

I love the attitude and it is advice is spot on at least for creative people and for people who want to learn new things.  The manifesto is from the Bre Pettis Blog.  You can find the original here.  This is it:

Dear Members of the Cult of Done.

I present to you a manifesto of done. This was written in collaboration with Kio Stark in 20 minutes because we only had 20 minutes to get it done.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. 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.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

I thank Ryan Jacoby from IDEO for sending this to me. In the email where Ryan sent it, he added, "This comes to me from Ken Meier. Ken is a colleague that gets things done. He laughs in the face of perfection." That is the right attitude for doing creative work in particular, because as I have written here before, the most creative people actually fail more than their more ordinary counterparts, simply because they do more stuff. See this post on Dean Keith Simonton's book Orgins of Genuis for more discussion and evidence.

Since I believe in iteration and editing, what changes would you suggest? What would you add? Would you take out anything?

I might add "Are you talking about getting it done, are actually getting it done?

Comments

[Jeff Shattuck]

Just discovered your blog today when a friend recommended this post. Love it!

My edits:

The point of being done is not to finish
but to get other things done.

Accept that everything is a draft.
It helps to get it done.

Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.

[Mark Taylor]

Another way of thinking about this:

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/663249/The_Cult_of_Done_Manifesto

[Lilly Evans]

This is an interesting list but too long to keep in short term memory! I tried to see how it can be made shorter. Since 9 out of 13 points contains word DONE they are prime candidates for combining/simplifying.

In the spirit of the Done Manifesto, here I go:

A 1 being=3 states
B 4 not knowing=knowing
C 2&3 no editing =all draft
D 8&9 quick&dirty=fun&right
E 5&6&7 1 week to get done&throw
F 10&11&13 done=done no matter what+new start
G 12 write done on internet
You may want to combine B&C as both address the How of Doing

Obviously not recommended in academia and corporations in the current climate. So, use is where?

[Eunoia]

NO!

Do it right,
the first time,
on time,
every time!

[Martin]

Personally, I interpret the "No editing" command differently. To me it does not necessarily imply that there should be no iterations and no editing, but that you should always work as if there was no editing. I often find myself caught in the trap of doing sub-par stuff while thinking, I can always redo this in the editing phase. And then I don't.

[Marsha Keeffer]

Excellent reminder to do it, dammit. Thanks for kicking me out of my torpor!

[Andy Nash]

I am a big fan of editing too, but I find that my best editing comes a week or two after I write something ... which means I get to count it as another thing done rather than simply finishing the first.