There’s a famous quotation, attributed to Voltaire, that goes “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” I couldn’t agree more. One of the biggest obstacles to getting something done well, or done at all, is trying to get it done perfectly.
If you’re struggling to overcome your own perfectionist impulses, you might be interested in The Cult of Done Manifesto. Don’t worry, it’s not some 700-page manuscript. It’s a list of simple principles put together by noted gadget-maker and electronics hacker Bre Pettis (along with Kio Stark).
The coolest part? They wrote it in just 20 minutes.
Here’s what’s in 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.
For my money, the crucial part of the Manifesto is “Laugh at perfection.” Getting through something and making mistakes is often the best, and most interesting, way to get something done. The result might not be perfect, but at least you have something you can start editing, instead of a blank page. Just don’t start editing it until a version of it is … well, done.
“Okay, but this won’t work for me,” you say, “Because my job demands perfection. I’m not allowed to make mistakes.” That’s a fair point, but I’d bet that turning things in on time is also expected at your job. If all perfection gets you is a blank page and a headache about deadlines, it might be time to try a different approach.
What are your thoughts on the Cult of Done Manifesto?
Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to The Morning News, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.
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Thanks for posting this. I enjoyed reading it and finding a lot of my hangups in here. Perfection is something I think I got from my father, and while I’m proud of getting something done perfectly, the problem is that it takes ten times longer to get something done. I’m getting better at it though.
I’d much rather have ten things done pretty good than one thing perfectly, but I’m still fighting that perfection thing. Argh.
One of these days I’ll figure it out.