Tuesday
Mar032009
The Cult of Done Manifesto
Mar 3, 2009Dear 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
- 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.
;)
Update: James Provost made the awesome poster for the Cult of Done Manifesto.
And Joshua Rothaas made this poster. I really want real physical posters of both of these!
There is also now a facebook group for the Cult of Done
Reader Comments (175)
I cannot subscribe to anything that has a manifesto. Steampunk, the Unibomber, Communism... you get the drift. Subsumes the individual.
Drafting a manifesto of done is a form of procrastination.
Commenting on the same manifesto is procrastination doubled.
Another way to think of it is that this is a psychological tool for giving yourself a feeling of making constant progress. This is especially appropriate for large, complex projects with zillions of interdependent parts, where it's easy to feel lost in the middle, and to spend the whole day working only to end up feeling like you haven't accomplished anything.
In order to always get things done, you have to break undoably large projects down into parts small enough to be doable. "Everything is a draft" is part of that. You can't write a novel in one sitting, unless there are some serious stimulants involved. But you can give yourself lots of small sub-novel-sized tasks, like "name the main character" or "make chapter 3 funnier" or "describe the spaceship more succinctly" and get each of them done. There's at least one successful novelist who apparently works this way.
Hey, this is basically how you sketch out an audit plan--especially on-the-fly modifications.
one of the best texts i've ever read!
thank you very much for it.
(nice illustrations as well)
Oh man, if number 3 were true I would never get anything Really done. I agree with all the others. Banish #3 though. It's an edit. Use it. I just edited this post within the few seconds it took to type this. #3 should be ALWAYS EDIT
@janeintexas: excellently and awesomely put.
@R Kane: That's a great way to put it. And your David Foster Wallace crack is PERFECT! Ha ha ha!
I love it!
Specially # 12 - Cheers!
(done)
Wow, it's a list...so that's pretty profound right there. And I'm sure Cinderella would love to celebrate #6 with you. Talk about a drudge report...
All I have to add here is that you can't done something without having had the will to do it first. Since will doesn't exist in the real world, what you're really talking about here is doing, This has also been described as both "Praxis" and "Habit" by thinkers who I'd say are approximately on the same level with you guys (Karl Marx and John Dewey).The result of doing might be described as "worked matter" (Sartre). Worked matter, nothing more, nothing less.
I would be out of business if I in a flash if I followed this idea. There are too many people that avoid the hard work because they believe they are done.This is rubish. I'm done now.
Wow, I never thought I'd see a personal and highly practiced philsophy of mine...so incredibly well presented....thank's to whomever came up with its assembly and of course the poster...I'll give it away for X'mas this year to so many people I know that could use a little reminder now and then...
Keep it up and keep the world posted ;)
A.
Wow, I never thought I'd see a personal and highly practiced philsophy of mine...so incredibly well presented....thank's to whomever came up with its assembly and of course the poster...I'll give it away for X'mas this year to so many people I know that could use a little reminder now and then...
Keep it up and keep the world posted ;)
A.
Wow, I never thought I'd see a personal and highly practiced philsophy of mine...so incredibly well presented....thank's to whomever came up with its assembly and of course the poster...I'll give it away for X'mas this year to so many people I know that could use a little reminder now and then...
Keep it up and keep the world posted ;)
A.
Done.
#14. Beer makes things get DONE faster.
I agree with the last post.
No. 4 is just what's wrong with the world - too many people pretending that they know what they're doing (eg. George W. Bush).
No. 3 is why I get so many inane e-mails.
Number 8 is my favorite, because I struggle with perfection the most.
I'm done reading this manifesto and happy to be done. I loved this post. It is some serious coping advice.
It is as good as done.
Well done.
Very well.
Thanks for that.
Your an ideot! Perfect, is, done completely!
I've really enjoyed reading both the support for and the opposition to this manifesto.
As a musician and a teacher, I find the position of the cult of done to be a welcome antidote to my perfection-mongering, procrastinating ways. As others have noted, it's well-suited to artistic work, where one can get utterly bogged down in the details, as well as to the daily deadlines of teaching.
I find it interesting that many of the opposing arguments focus on the problems with doing things fast. Sure, that can be problematic, but I understand this as being about action, not speed (well, other than #5 - which I disagree with; some ideas are meant for a later time and have excellent shelf lives).
OK, you wanted poster prints? I've got prints, but not quite posters--I rendered a few of these via the Gocco screenprinting machine. I've got:
- 3 notebooks
- 10 4x6 white cards
- 10 4.5 x 6.75 cream premium cards
The notebooks and 3 of each card set are reserved, but the rest are available, first come, first serve, just email me
DONE is a great concept, as long as it isn't misconstrued as a permit for irresponsibility. Whatever we do leaves a mark that we own, that someone else may be forced to fix if we take no responsibility for error or ignorance. Calling it DONE and moving on doesn't change that.
I rly lik the part abt not ever editng. What a frekn wast of tim.