Cult of Done, applied to side projects
I have a graveyard of half-built things. A travel portal that was going to be perfect. A writing app with three tools and plans for thirty. Each one died the same way: not from failure, but from polish I kept adding while no one was looking.
The Cult of Done Manifesto has one idea that finally stuck with me — finishing is the engine, not the goal. A done thing, even an ugly one, frees you to start the next thing. A perfect plan just sits there consuming attention.
What changed in practice
Now every side project gets a deliberately small first cut. This blog is the example: a folder of Markdown files, one build step, no CMS.
If an idea sits unbuilt for more than a week, I either ship a rough version or let it go.
The rule sounds harsh, but it's freeing. But still I have get used to it.
git add content/posts/2026-06-12-cult-of-done.md
git commit -m "ship it, fix it later"
git push # Coolify rebuilds, it's live
That last line is the whole point. The distance between an idea and something on the internet should be one git push — short enough that perfectionism never gets a foothold.
This is for reminding myself: There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
There is no editing stage.
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.
Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
Once you’re done you can throw it away.
Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
Destruction is a variant of done.
If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.