Tag: Getting Things Done

The “cult of done” pretty much involves half doing things…

Productivity is a modern idol. So too “getting things done”… Me. I just like “being effective.” That’s what I’ve decided…

Here’s a proposed manifesto for the getting things done movement. Illustrated.

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.

What are your thoughts? Is prodigious production of products better than the production of polished products that do a job? I’m somewhere on that spectrum towards the polished product end. But I recognise that spending 80 hours on the last 20% of your product isn’t very efficient.

Time Management

Had an interesting little meeting this morning on time management strategies. It was one of those “break out into little clusters and write lists of suggestions” type meetings. I think that’s ironic given the massive amount of duplication in the suggestions and the time taken to report back to everyone.

But I wonder. Does anyone have any good time management ideas they can share? I spend a lot of time reading about how to be more productive and this hasn’t necessarily translated to increased productivity. I’m enjoying Ben Bathgate’s introductory series “Getting Things Done” philosophy – anyone who reads lifehacker knows about the GTD philosophy already. It seems like a good idea – and I’ll no doubt be sharing a lot of Ben’s posts via my shared links posts.

The funniest bit of today’s meeting was that I was in the breakout group with our CEO – a noted perfectionist – and one of my “miscellaneous time management” suggestions was that the pursuit of perfection can be a time waster. The difference between “good enough” and “perfect” can be minimal but achieving perfection often takes a long time. She “agreed with the sentiment” but couldn’t find the words to describe it when we were reporting back to the team.

Any good tips you’ve got for me – or others – share them in the comments