The Cult of Done

I'm quite intrigued and even hopeful about an idea called “the cult of done.” It speaks to me because I get very excited about the latest thing I've discovered and after investing some time or thought in it, abandon it for the next cool thing while never completely letting go of it. Which, of course, results in a lot of mental and physical (and sometimes emotional) clutter, which makes it hard for me to be in the present.

More and more, I'm finding myself stressed out by overwhelm and less tolerant of the mess, so this idea comes at a great time. And it resonates strongly with some other approaches I find appealing: Getting Things Done by David Alan and The Clutter Diet.

Here's The Cult of Done Manifesto from Bre Pettis' blog:

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.

While I don't fully embrace all of these points*, I really like the state of mind that they engender and I'm bringing that more and more into my daily life. They recall the distinction between finished and complete that I learned through some of Werner Erhard's trainings. In short, that completion is a declaration and doesn't require that something be “finished”. I also like number 11, Destruction is a variant of done, which speaks to the power of simplifying and decluttering.