The Cult of Done

This just in from the Do Lecture's Kindling newsletter. Good reading for folk who who want to get better things done faster.

The cult of Done Manifesto

Bre Pettis and Kio Stark

01 There are three states of being.

Not knowing, action and completion.

02 Accept that everything is a draft.

It helps to get done.

03 There is no editing stage.

04 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.

05 Banish procrastination. If you wait more

than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.

06 The point of being done is not to finish but

to get other things done.

07 Once you’re done you can throw it away.

08 Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps

you from being done. 

09 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.

Wales Climate Action

The Welsh Assembly's Climate Team are holding their autumn information sharing, inspiration and idea generation event in Llangollen over two days 22-23 November. Speakers include the outstanding Jay Griffiths, whose book 'Wild' is one of the best I've ever read.

I have the pleasure of running the first day - any questions to me or Usha Ladwa Thomas.

Further information here - look for the file titled Llangollen.

Making the boring interesting

Liv Knight runs the wonderful Challenger Project at Eat Big Fish - their motto is 'do more with less' - a good start point for intelligent design.

In this week's post, Liv asked a handful of smart people to share their ' three things'; these from Akala Daley, founder of the Hip Hop Shakespeare Company, are clever for their simplicity.

Akala Daley from eatbigfish on Vimeo.

Summertime bonfires

Next time that you're thinking of doing a BBQ or a beach bonfire, find time for a quick look at Duke Stump's 2009 Do Lecture on Bonfires for the Soul - inspiring stuff.

Toxic conversations or useful mutations

Blogger and media guru Euan Semple is one of the excellent speakers at this year's Do Lectures; his simple, powerful insights are what many businesses need to make sense of change that's happening. A couple of days back Euan posted this:

During the Q&A at a recent event a senior manager in the organisation I was speaking to said something along the lines of "If we let people begin to use these social media tools then we won't have control over what is said in public". I waited a moment then asked "And what will happen then?"

There was an awkward silence then someone at the back of the room said in loud voice, directed at the senior person, "Yes - what will happen then?"

The funny thing is that about a week before, almost exactly the same thing happened to me in reponse to a question of "how many of you are blogging regularly", with an audience of partners of a consultancy who wanted to be better known. "We can't have allow uncensored copy going out online". Silence again, then a voice that said "apart from the facebook group of ex-employees - we censor ourselves and they don't".

Here's a Do. If you've never blogged before, set up a new blog and commit to writing 25 posts , using the excellent free tools on offer from sites such as blogger, wordpress or tumblr. Write in a diary style about what's interesting. If you can't find anything interesting to write about, change your job or your life, and write about the change. In a blog.