Quite a few years ago, I heard a piece of advice, which at that time sounded pretty great. If something takes less than two minutes, do it right away. Seemed like a great advice on paper. It did propel me to tick a lot of things off my todo list, for a few years. I eventually got so used to doing many tiny things during my day, that I barely even thought about it. But what took me quite a long time to realise is that there is quite literally an endless supply of things to care of that take two minutes or less. What was missing from that piece of advice is how to stop doing the next tiny task.
I keep talking about productivity, but that is not only because I am trying to learn how not to be productive, but also question this new general philosophy of life. In Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, there was a character who unlearned reading. Instead of seeing a piece of text and immediately reading it, he taught himself to not read. If this person had endless pieces to read, he probably would be better off only reading when he really wanted to. It is somewhat freeing to be able to willing oneself into reading; or doing a mundane task, without the compulsion. I am only vocal about this, because it also questions the idea of the idealised version of me I strive for,
Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
Bre Pettis wrote this in their manifesto, The Cult of Done, and I agree with it more and more, because there always things that look like they could use a bit more work.1
I took a bit of an extreme step last night, after working on my project until late at night, that there was no poetry in what I was doing, and I refused to give in to my compulsion of keeping chasing the next perfectionists' high; I decided maybe I will work on it once a week, if I feel the need.
Once you’re done you can throw it away. - The Cult of Done
I had a teacher, who told us about an art student who would burn and destroy his paintings after he was done with them. I thought it was asinine to throw away hard work. But he thought it was pointless to keep the painting that was done and only kept him to moving on to a new painting. Whatever his work was, had enough of a home in his own mind.
Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. - The Cult of Done
It also flies into the smug face of modern corporate ethos that I grew up in as a professional; "nothing is ever done, there is only a process". Probably works really well in a corporate hamster wheel; but if I don't move to the next piece of poetry in my free time after another, why do I have free time for.
- For very good reasons usually. ↩︎