So mere hours after writing Monday’s post about procrastination and perfectionism (okay, it might have been days — didn’t I just say that I have been procrastinating? *wink*), I came across this manifesto written by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark. Number 10’s my favorite.

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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.

Take that, Procrastination!

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*Also, in another smashup of my perfectionism and the universe’s sense of humor, I noticed that I missed posts #8 and #9 in my Food for Thought series.

So … this is Food for Thought #8.

Because I said so.

(And because renumbering posts #10-17 might break my blog’s brain.)

I started this summer excited about all the great things I was going to do with my spontaneous singing work. Audio files and how-to videos and worksheets and spontaneous singing classes and recording projects and …

Well, summer is moving along (It’s FINALLY hot in MN; tho I think I’m the only person happy about it. *smile*) and nothing’s happening.

I’m not moving. At all.

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Okay, that’s unfair. I’m moving in circles and fits and starts. I’m drafting and rewriting and scribbling and editing. I’ve written a bunch of outlines and I’ve got legal pads full of cryptic notes. But I’m not producing. There have been no “products.” I haven’t finished anything. Ideas that seemed exciting and dynamic and inspirational at first, loose their luster … quickly.

Now, for a while I could justify this lack of progress. I was working full time. I was doing a lot of behind the scenes clean up and organizing on my blog and my web sites. My singing group was reworking our vision statement and picking directions for the next year. People visited me. My friend died. I was sad and busy.

And … I didn’t want to just throw something up to say I had done it. I wanted the stuff to be good.

Hmm. I began to suspect something else was going on.

Sarah, meet Procrastination — and her fraternal twin Perfectionism.

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Procrastination and Perfectionism, may I introduce you to my friend, Improvisation?

So once I realized I’d been spending the summer palling around with Procrastination and Pefectionism, I asked myself “When I’m holding back in an improv, what do I do?”

• Check out why I’m waiting. (Do things feel unstable? Am I lacking a sense of the whole piece?)
• Allow myself to start. And stop. And start again.
• Allow myself to change directions
• Sing one idea at a time
• Set my intentions
• Trust my intuition and instincts
• Commit

I’ve learned from improv that fits and starts can work. That not every idea will start at the beginning and move to the end. Sometimes you have to find your way into what’s happening any way you can. Sometimes the middle or end happen first. (Then they become the beginning. *wink*)

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The other thing I’ve learned is that even if I’m unsure of what I’m doing, I have to commit. You have to sing your ideas with conviction to figure out whether or not they’re going to take you anywhere.

So … I commit to develop a product for this blog by the end of summer. (Ooh … I cringe just typing it. That’d be Perfectionism rearing her head.)

Let’s try this.

I intend to organize some of the information about spontaneity and singing that I’ve been accumulating and share it with you. The sooner the better.

There, that sounds perfect.

“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
— J.K. Rowling

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Thanks to K for forwarding this to me.

Got an inspirational, funny, wacky, educational quote, video or article to share? Tell me about it in the comments.