Do things imperfectly (and tell people about it)

I recently came across a wonderful dictum in the Pirkei Avot that’s attributed to Rabbi Tarfon:

“It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.”

It is a good reminder that perfectionism is a character flaw. Something done imperfectly is better than never starting at all. We must not refrain from action due to the fear of failure. Failure is not getting started in the first place, not doing something imperfectly. It bears repeating – the only true failure is not starting at all. The antidote to this failure starts with play - doing things without consideration of how they will be received by others.

“Music as an art form is essentially playful; you say you “play the piano”, you don’t work the piano.”
– Alan Watts

Not everything we do must be work in service of some greater purpose. In her recent book Tiny Experiments, Anne-Laure Le Cunff described it as “the tyranny of purpose”, or the need for our activities to be advancing some grand goal so that we “win at life” by arriving at some destination. Doing something simply for fun, or to learn, without worrying about how the thing will be received by others is the starting point to overcoming true failure.

Overcoming true failure begins with doing things imperfectly, and without preconditions. In their Cult of Done Manifesto, Bre Pettis and Kio Stark lay out a good starting point for overcoming this resistance to action. The manifesto is short, just 13 points. Here are a few of my favourites:

Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.

I have a queue of half-written blog posts that feels like it has grown, not shrunk. After reading this, I let go and returned them to the ideas pool. I might revisit them, but only under the umbrella of actively working on them. No more aspirational post ideas that never get worked on.

Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.

Failing counts as done, and therefore not a failure at all because at least we tried something. Remember, the only real failure is not starting at all. Afraid? Don’t know where to begin? Start by defining the things you are uncertain about. I have found that the tasks on my to-do list that I avoid and procrastinate on the most are the ones where “done” is ambiguous. When I define the outcome (and occasionally break it down into multiple tasks), I can easily accomplish the thing. The same holds true for more creative projects.

For these blog posts, I define done as 100 words. Concerns such as coherence of thought or quality don’t enter into it. They begin as letters to myself on an idea that’s captured my attention. Not all of these make the leap to published posts, and that’s ok. My only purpose for them was to explore an idea I’m curious about.

If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.

Not everything you do needs to be shared with others. Nor does it need to be published in public - just sharing with friends is perfectly acceptable. But telling people about what you’re doing leads to learning, growth, and new perspectives.

Done is the engine of more.

All that is required of us is that we do things imperfectly, and tell people. Completing the thing for some grand purpose is not necessary. What done looks like is up to us to define, and all we need to do is keep doing. We are not at liberty to desist from having fun, from playing, or from exploring. The more we do, the more we have the opportunity to continue doing.