Doing it once and letting go

modified 01/10/2023 00:10

I recently found out about the cult of done manifesto from a youtube video from the channel No Boilerplate, and one of the ideas in it stuck out: there’s no editing stage. The reason it stuck out with me, is because I’ve heard it before from someone else – protesilaos, a philosopher and emacs programmer whose ideas I admire and consider interesting. Prot mentions this very idea multiple times in some of his posts. Everything he writes now (usually answers to email lifestyle-related questions from his viewers and journal entries) is written in one go, and then posted, without being edited.

This, I think, is very liberating. Accepting imperfection is like a weight being lifted off. I’ve watched A Most Violent Year recently, and Abel, the main character, told Julian something that resonates with this idea too – that it’s okay to be afraid, becauase they’re being vulnerable. Accepting fear and being vulnerable is what makes you stronger, not running away from it.

Another simiar idea I’ve heard from a photographer – Rubin Reading (I believe?). Photographs are usually taken from the eye-level, looking through the viewfinder. But in street photography, doing that is sometimes scary (being seen as you’re taking a picture can lead to confrontations; I believe street photography is quite a nice way to practice accepting being afraid and vulnerable), thus sometimes you take photograhs from below, without looking in the viewfinder, which is called “shooting from the hip”. When asked about why Rubin does it, he said something like “you can make mistakes shooting from the hip and you can make mistakes looking through the viewfinder, so it doesn’t really matter”. It’s especially true when you understand how little you can actually control things. You can make a perfect thing which will fail, and you can make and imperfect thing which will fail, so, why bother with perfection?

I’ll try applying this rule for my future writings and for the other things I create. This donesn’t mean slacking off or doing something half-assed just to get over with it (if you’re going to try, go all the way¹). It simply means that I’ll put in all the effort something requires, but then, after finishing, I’ll just be finished, and will start doing something else, without caring too much about the imperfections of what I’ve now created.