The Power of Done

Many foods are better not cooked to a crisp.

Cookies, gooey in the middle, steak pink in the centre, vegetables not boiled to a pulp. It’s all better a little less well-done.

Not done at all and you have a health hazard on your hands (I admit, I would risk my life for cookie dough 🍪 ) but overdone and no one’s rushing back for more.

Startups apply this theory to their products. The first prototype you release doesn’t have to be fully cooked. It has to be just ‘done’ enough to indicate potential product-market-fit.

According to Esquire, 86% of Americans order their steak some shade of medium. Just 2.5% order rare steak. However, it’s likely that those 2.5% are “steak super fans” (extreme users in UX terms) and consume it more regularly or at a higher price point than the medium group.

The rare steak is barely “done”, yet a small group of people love it, much like the startup that uses a basic, barely-done prototype to find a small, loyal customer base. Overdone and you’ve wasted time building something that nobody wants.

The Power of Done

Done is about impact. Getting something over the line or out there in the real world is not about doing as many things as possible or doing something to the maximum level of doneness, as it often results in wasted energy.

Seth Godin talks about the concept of “shipping” your idea, your product, your book. Getting it out there is the hardest part, and the part most people underestimate.

We sometimes put 100% of our effort into getting it to maximum doneness and leave no bandwidth for getting it out there. This takes us to a “tree falling in the woods” scenario. If I write a book but fail to get it out there in the world, did I really write a book?

Society praises “writing a book” when the real definition of done for authors is selling a book. The one stashed away in the depths of your dropbox doesn’t count (yet).

How can we rewire our brains to focus more on the output than on the input? Sure, we should set ourselves a competitive standard for our finished product, but there’s a risk we fine-tune it so much that we forget to focus on the true definition of done.

A robust launch plan and marketing campaign might get our book a lot closer to “done” than one more rewrite of chapter eleven.

Day-to-day we are forced into a to-do-list tunnel where the light at the end is each of these items crossed off as “done”. Unsurprisingly, we lose sight of the impact on the bigger picture.

How many things could we delete from our to do list without any change to the material impact we create?

The Well-Done Fallacy

Why do we get caught in the web of many tasks well-done? Society is all about getting things to a state of well-done.

How does someone praise you when you’ve spent a disproportionate amount of your time on something? “Well done!”

We live in a pressure cooker where the “get-things-done culture” bears down on us to do, to achieve, to buy.

On a typical Monday in the office, a team member might ask “what did you do at the weekend?” “Have you done that task yet?” “What are you doing for lunch?” “Why did you do it this way?” “When can you get this done by?”

Society runs on people getting things done so it encourages us to do more. We’re the grease that keeps the wheels turning. But this obsession often turns into what Anna Codrea-Rado calls productivity dysmorphia.

We define our productivity by the amount of things we can get done, and the level of doneness of each, rather than the impact we create. As a result, we get stuck on the hedonic treadmill of “never enoughness”.

We become obsessive list-makers and list-checkers moving through life from one set of to-do’s to the next. When the well-done fallacy warps our perception of “enough”, how to step off the hamster wheel?

The Art of Medium-Well

What if we trained ourselves out of chomping through tasks until they reach “well-done” and instead focused on doing the most important things medium-well?

Kate Northrup, author of Do Less suggests this is critical not only to our survival but to our success.

The most satisfied people in the workplace today are those who have mastered the art of medium-well. They get maximum recognition for their work and achieve maximum impact.

What do they do differently?

They know just how much is enough and resist the temptation to do more.

They turn down tasks that don’t make the right impact.

What does that look like?

They go above and beyond where it counts. The medium-rare steak isn’t cooked in the middle. Instead, the chef spends that time carefully searing the outside to guarantee a crisp texture and a slightly charred edge.

Enough attention is given to both the outside and the inside of the steak, but the chef has the courage to distribute that attention disproportionately, focusing attention where it counts.

Similarly, we might create a portfolio of work for a client or boss and understand that one part of the presentation should shine where another part only needs to be the support act.

If you’ve spent time tinkering with the formatting in the appendix of a powerpoint deck, I see you. What would it look like to do the bare minimum for the appendix and spend that time honing the pitching and the talk track?

The challenge for team leads is to make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to hitting the bar vs. exceeding it. There’s nothing worse than feeling like extra effort isn’t needed on that thing and your boss asking you to push it to 110%.

Clear, consistent communication on the “why” behind the task is needed to help the team push forward in the same direction. The more you can agree in advance on the medium-well strategy, the easier the team’s journey together.

Hit the Medium-Well Sweet Spot

Knowing when to sprint and when to jog takes time and is ultimately a process of trial and error, but this process is crucial to our progression over time. Play it safe and submit all your tasks burnt to a crisp and you may burn out too.

On the flipside, medium-well is not the same as a job half-done – forgetting the ‘impact’ part and sending things back to the kitchen half-baked won’t do the trick.

Start experimenting with medium-well in safe spaces and see how you can create an even stronger impact with your work.

Here are a few experiments to try in different situations:

Pressured?
If you’re feeling the mounting pressure of a mountain of tasks well-done, ask yourself “what would medium-well look like?”

Time-Poor?
If a task is taking up more time than you wanted, pause for a minute and jot down the answer to 1) What impact can this task create for me? 2) What must I do to make maximum impact?

Overwhelmed?
Break the tasks down into a series of chunks. List these chunks on a “to-do list” and a “not-to-do list”. This helps prioritise what’s critical and deprioritise less critical components that came along for the ride.

Purposeless?
If you’re unsure of the impact of a task, clarify the “why” with whoever asked you to do it. If you’re still unsure, take a values-based approach. Which of my values do I want to shine through in the output? Integrity? Innovation? Courage? Use this as your guiding light and strip everything else away.

In too deep?
Professor Anna Katharina Schaffner suggests a simple (but often neglected) technique: take a break to focus on something enjoyable. A breath of fresh air, a moment of connection with someone around you, even a minute to appreciating your surroundings. Return to the task and take a fresh perspective.

Lastly, get comfortable with medium-well. As the logic-driven, more intentional cousin of “half done” it can feel uncomfortable, especially when we miss the sweet spot. This means it takes courage and practice to implement.

It hurts many an inner perfectionist to leave things half-cooked. But like a good steak, it’s sometimes much better medium-well than well-done.

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