The inbox is never empty and The Cult of Done

Recently, a friend posted the following on my Facebook wall, compliments of a blogger named Bre Pettis.  (You can find his blog here http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-manifesto.html

The Cult of Done:

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 someone who struggles with analysis paralysis, who suffers from fear in committing anything to paper in case it isn't perfect, for whom decisions are the hurdle at which I fall - this is gold.  I could procrastinate for New Zealand at the olympics for all these reasons.  And, it seems, I'm not alone.

There is an accompanying Facebook page to this manifesto called 'The Cult of Done' which has 3207 members.  From cleaning out the refrigerator to paying tax, members post the things they have finally gotten around to doing.  This is really quite cool on a number of levels.  We could all do with a little praise and recognition, right?  I mean, I don't need to be followed around by a cheerleading squad all my life, but a little love would go a long way on occasions.  If I've finally managed to clean the cobwebs out from behind the dresser, well, that deserves a small shout out, surely?   If I achieved 200 words in my Masters thesis - go me.  Cleaned up the cat sick?  Goddess.  If I posted any of that up on my own Facebook wall it would be considered insufferably smug by some, unbearably boring by others, and baffling to the majority, I suspect.  By providing an outlet for telling our successes, aside from saving our loved ones from such random posting, doing so helps us to feel a sense of achievement  in what might otherwise feel like a day of carting water uphill in a sieve, right up until we fall into bed exhausted and feeling no further ahead than the day before.  The inbox of life is never empty, and if we don't notice our own successes we often forget we had any.  How often do you feel like you've been super busy but you've made no progress?  We shouldn't forget to pat ourselves on the back for what we have managed to do (in the face of all the stuff we didn't), doing so is what fuels our ability to face the next day, and the next, and the next....without feeling stressed out by the futility of it all.  Okay, that might be a little bleak, but you get my point.

Ultimately though, for me it's about learning to do things without fear and without feeling overwhelmed.  The above manifesto is a great reminder that just getting on and doing it is sometimes the best thing we can do.  Not sure exactly where you're headed?  So what?  Just start.  Not sure it's perfect?  No such thing anyway.  Paralysed by the length of the to-do list?  Get comfortable with the fact that the in-box is never empty - it isn't all or nothing - no need to sit on the couch naval gazing with no idea where to start.

So celebrate the stuff - the big stuff the small stuff the I finally got off my arse and paid the power bill stuff......go you!!