Matt Tillotson
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Guess what? Life is a dress rehearsal.

At what point is "good enough" good enough? We all have too much to do and too little time. Be on strategy. Avoid sloppy mistakes. Close the book. Learn and be even better next time.

"Life is not a dress rehearsal!"

Rose Tremain, a British author, coined the phrase in the Sunday Correspondent in 1989.It's now a favored motivational cliche.

Sorry Rose. You were wrong. Life is a dress rehearsal. And thank goodness.

I thought about that quote as I read a list posted on Dan Pink's blog today. The list is called 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.

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.

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

  2. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.

  3. Once you’re done you can throw it away.

  4. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.

  5. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.

  6. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.

  7. Destruction is a variant of done.

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

  9. Done is the engine of more.

The amazing thing about this list is that it doesn't define "done" as perfection. Everything is a work in progress. Even done. In that sense, everything is a dress rehearsal.

At a dress rehearsal, the cast:

  • Knows the strategy, and does it's best to execute that strategy.

  • Understands the basics and is able to avoid simple mistakes as it executes.

  • Does its best to improve its knowledge base as it executes.

  • Learns from its efforts, and does even better at the next dress rehearsal.

Good dress rehearsals are not done half-assed. Good dress rehearsals feature everyone doing their best, giving their all, being on strategy and crisp. And good dress rehearsals involve a lot of learning.

Even the performance is a dress rehearsal. A good cast will still learn. The audience and the director are judging and criticizing and providing feedback on improvement. Sounds like "done" to me.

Sorry Rose. Life is a dress rehearsal. And that's great. How would we ever get anything done otherwise?