this is a companion blog post to my HalfStack London talk, The Cult of Done... and My Journey to Becoming a Maker, which was delivered in November 2024. this was subsequently delivered at Queer in Tech in March 2025. this blog post may contain content cut for the sake of time, has been lightly edited for clarity, and may contain existential dread.

I want to tell a personal story of growth, of finding identity, of changing as a person, and of things I wish someone told me when I started my career. for context, I've worked as a software engineer for the past six years. during my career, I've built tools to tackle complex financial crime, I've run my own consultancy, I've delivered a handful of conference talks and I've volunteered with a charity that helps get underrepresented people into tech. I'm proud of my impact.

making computers do stuff has always come naturally to me, because they’ve always fascinated me. as I’ve somehow managed to convert the curiosity created by my first laptop into a semi-successful career, I’ve never really given myself the chance to dabble in anything other than software engineering. however, I eventually started to wonder, somewhat disillusioned, about the point of it all. what’s the purpose of what I make and I build, beyond driving shareholder value? what am I doing with my life, beyond achieving KPIs? would anyone even remember me when I'm gone? what would they remember?

well, the best time to have a midlife crisis is in your early 20s. you find yourself with a lot of time on your hands to experiment, to explore, to reinvent yourself and to find some comfort in the uncaring of the universe. you're also guaranteed to live until forty, which is reassuring.

at the time, the job I had was monotonous. I felt my function, my purpose, was to press buttons and change the lights on the light-box. if the patterns were right, good job! if the patterns were wrong, I’d panic, press more buttons, rinse and repeat. maybe someone would shout at me. I ate, slept and breathed software engineering; it was all-consuming.

I felt lost, directionless and stagnant. despite good friends, a solid support network and a decent salary, I felt something was missing, and it was so intangible that trying to grasp it made it even more evasive. looking back, this was an unhealthy and unsustainable way to live.

instead of being the cool person who did cool shit, I was trapped in a miserable slog. I wanted the joy I felt when I ran my own consultancy, where I had the freedom to pursue projects that delighted me. I wanted to be like the people I looked up to, who seemed more fulfilled than I am.

they obtained their joy from the act of making. however, emulating them seemed like an impossible task. given their access to workshops with CNC machines and woodworking tools, their studios with paintbrushes and easels and their labs with 3D printers and lasers, I felt lost. I felt alone.

turning to the Internet, I found a video by Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame. he is arguably one of the greatest makers of his generation, with an interesting view on who a maker is.

...whenever you set out to make something from nothing, using your point of view, you're a maker. — Ask Adam Savage: What is a "Maker"?

it was comforting to find that there other people in this big, beautiful, wide world who wanted to figure out was was going on, and they found some solace in the act of creation. they found a refuge in the art of breathing life into something beyond themselves. seeing myself as one of them filled me with awe as to who I could become.

becoming a maker, however, begs the question: how do I create things worthy of existence, and worthy of others' time? how do I turn my excitement for the world into things that are truly beautiful? how do I make?

the Cult of Done manifesto, a document composed by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark, has been a guiding light on my maker journey. I remember discovering this simple, yet poignant, piece in the early days of the Internet.

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.
4. 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.
5. banish procrastination. if you wait more than a week to get an idea done, shelve it.
6. the point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. laugh at perfection. it's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. people without dirty hands are wrong, but doing something makes you right.
10. failure counts as done, so make mistakes.
11. destruction is a variant of done.
12. if you have an idea and publish it on the Internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. done is the engine of more.

these thirteen principles have served me well as I’ve navigated becoming a maker, each proving invaluable in some way. I'd like to share my thoughts on the five which have made me more confident in the act of making. hopefully how I feel can give you some clarity.

there are three states to being: not knowing, action and completion.

when you start doing something, you don’t know how to do it. you learn, you convert that knowledge into action, and then you produce a finished product. having words to express those states, no matter how obvious they seemed, was incredible. it allowed me to form a creative process around learning and iterating.

my career as a software engineer has taught me how to translate ideas into a series of actions people can complete to produce an output. this was a useful skill for making, as I simply define a series of steps I could follow to build a project. for each step, I attach a definition of done and understand the knowledge I need to reach completion. then, I research, develop and build, transitioning from not knowing, to action, and finally completion.

think of your project like a wall. like bricks in a wall, each completed step builds on the ones before. unless you're doing something novel, you're likely doing something that's been done before and you're likely building things that have been built before. despite this, discovering things from first principles for yourself is exciting! in the process of going from not knowing, to action, to completion over and over again, you're struck by the marvels of what you discover. this process lifts the spirit.

one of the first, and most important, things I learnt was that it's okay not to know things. not knowing is scary and uncomfortable, and the process of learning can be very liminal. it's this weird space between complete naivety and complete competency, often without a curriculum to guide you. however, I find not knowing powerful, as it motivates you to arm yourself the knowledge necessary to move onto action, and then to completion.

the realisation that everyone has to learn, that no one person knows everything, is incredibly humbling. the makers I looked up to and admired had to hone their craft over time, grappling with the same discomfort I felt. that encouraged me to be kinder to myself.

as cliché as it sounds, learning is a process. if you find you can't learn something, it's unlikely you're dumb (although I'm unable to discount that possibility. I'm a blog post, after all). it may simply be that you don't have the prerequisites yet.

this way of thinking about the creative process ties in nicely with the other principles, too. dive in head first and accept you might not know what you're doing, and do to lay those bricks, to do other stuff.

once you’re done you can throw it away.

when I started out making, it felt good to accomplish. I got an addictive dopamine rush from creating something from nothing. however, eventually I started to feel I'd never do better than what I'd just made. I'd peaked, that was it, and it was downhill from here on out.

nobody fucking cares.

the truth is nobody cares if I can't make something better. I will die as unremarkably as I have lived, and I will soon be forgotten. any legacy I have will be washed away by the sands of time. I make, not for the sake of my output, but to enrich my life and the lives of others around me right now. I share the experience of creating things with those who care about me, and I value what I make. however, I make to learn, build and do, not to produce.

learning to throw the output away, and detaching myself from final product means I can scrap something I don't like, and arm myself with the knowledge from my attempt. I can work towards something being good enough to be a brick in that wall, such that I can build, and build, and build.

when you let go, you come to the terrifying realisation that perfection is an abstract, and unachievable, notion. if you sacrifice good enough on the altar of perfection, you rob yourself of the opportunity to learn. carry skills from project to project, and from endeavour to endeavour. we should aim to build a graph of knowledge we can use to connect any concept to any other. making should be about acquiring knowledge about the world over time, so we can share the joy with others.

the bricks we make don't need to be factory-cast, they only need to be useful enough as a brick. the bricks we build with simply need to be good enough to hold up the walls we build long enough for others to admire before we tear them down.

people without dirty hands are wrong, but doing something makes you right.

when starting on something new, making decisions feels paralysing. you're coping with all manner of hypotheticals, and what-ifs. we naturally try to avoid this analysis paralysis by drawing on others' knowledge. however, others can only take us so far.

think of the colour red, or the scent of the rain on a summer's day, or the taste of a glass of red wine. try to describe those sensations to someone else, in a way they truly 'get'. you can't. that elusive, impossible-to-grasp sensation is called qualia. those subjective experiences, the ones truly innate to ourselves, are why we make.

yes, we should glean knowledge from others' experiences before we embark on a creative journey of our own. yes, speaking to others will save us a lifetime. however, obsessing over what has come before will stop you from going out and doing things. it will hinder your personal journey to done.

nobody else can push you to do. you need to make that decision to dive in head first, to iterate, to learn, to improve, to become more capable and to feel the satisfaction and joy of creation. people who haven't done jack shit telling you you can't do something are wrong. however, you, dear reader, are also wrong for not getting your hands dirty.

building on this principle, I think one of the most painful lessons I've learnt is not to share too early. when you let people in too early, you inadvertently make them a part of your creative process. everyone's conflicting opinions will hinder, rather than help. what you make isn't yours anymore. you lose focus, catering to someone else's vision instead of building something you're proud of. allow yourself to exercise your creative faculties, so you can improve them. the more you hone your process, the better you get at creation.

figuring out when to share is difficult. the more you make, the easier it is to know when you're ready. although it depends on the project, I found it useful to build something which was personally satisfying, the minimum lovable product, before sharing it with others.

I find it's not valuable to look for feedback on ideas, as it's difficult to convey why things are significant to you. instead, I seek specific feedback on how I cast the bricks for my w. I don't care if you think my idea is silly, I want to know whether I'm going about it the right way.

if someone asks for your advice on making, be flattered. this person sees you as wise enough to consult on some matter or another. however, the best outcome might not be to directly address their query. instead, ask probing questions to understand what they're trying to achieve and how exactly you can help. it might be more valuable to keep your thoughts to yourself, and be a reliable rubber duck who helps them explore their own creativity.

as you become more competent in a particular domain, you'll know when to let people in and what feedback to action versus ignore. give yourself mental space to make, without the interference of others.

you'll learn more than you realise when you finally lay that first brick.

failure counts as done, so make mistakes.

I had unhealthy fear of failure, which made me reluctant to try new things. however, making has allowed me to reframe failure as a variant of completion.

"failure, by definition, means you've tried and haven't succeeded," I hear you cry. "how can it be a form of completion?"

first off, this is a blog post. stop shouting. I can't hear you.

secondly, I get nobody likes failure. it's weird, and it feels bad. this was difficult for me to contend with at first, too. however, part of the point of making is to acquire knowledge over time. with that in mind, the question when making shifts from "have I finished?" to "have I learnt?"

failure is a perfectly acceptable stopping point for a project. it's okay to stop, to give yourself time and space to breathe and learn your lessons before moving onto the next big thing. you can always come back to it another time.

I notice I have a tendency to internalise failure, and see it as a reflection of my obvious, bumbling incompetence. I've almost always blamed negative outcomes on myself. if I try to discuss what contributed to failure, I'm told "shifting the blame", and "not taking responsibility". now, I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist, but I'd guess a big reason for that is pressure from some managers for me to always be "better". better, of course, is never clearly defined, and all I know is I'm not good enough.

I've noticed the tendency for some managers to weaponise the growth mindset. they concoct their own bullshit from the dregs of toxic positivity and hustle culture, and repackage it into a corporate-friendly veneer. know there is nothing you can do to be good enough for them. we shouldn't be cruel to ourselves. we are the only ones who will be consistently compassionate to ourselves. if you don't like doing something, you can just stop without any consequence.

viewing failure as a form of completion let me focus on what I want to improve. when I've delivered this post as a talk, I've always been asked, "how do you know what failure is? how do you quantify failure, as opposed to success?"

personally, success is something more fundamental than an applauding audience, or all-green test suites. my definition of success includes understanding how I'd like to improve my skills. if you focus on what you want to accomplish and achieve, you take a much healthier view to creation. Jake the Dog puts this quite nicely.

Dude, sucking is the first step to being sorta good at something. — Jake the Dog, Adventure Time (S1, E25)

the only way you learn is by doing!

some people use SMART goals to have clear definition, but I prefer vibes-based goal-setting so I don't put too much pressure on myself. for example, the aim of this talk and writing this blog post, my definition of done, is to create a resource I wish I had when starting out. I'll only find out if I've succeeded or failed once I've put it out there. if other people find it useful, I've succeeded. if it's lacking, I've failed. whatever happens, I've learnt from the experience. you'll learn to define your done.

it's okay to put your tools down, and to stop building that wall. you've learnt how to cast and lay bricks, and that's pretty cool!

done is the engine of more.

you don't do for the sake of it. in your own time, you go on to do more things, different things and better things. there is always more to do, if you choose to.

doing things lets you iterate. you compound your experiences and grow in ability and as a person. I encourage you to go out there, to do more things, by yourself and with others. it will make you a better person. the art of creation taught me more about the world, my skills and myself.

making feels uncomfortable, terrifying, at first. imbuing a small piece of yourself into everything you make and letting it out into the world doesn’t come naturally to most. however, keeping at it helps you work through that discomfort.

my biggest fear was that what I made was a reflection of my internal state. that terrified me. I still don’t know who I am, what I’m doing here, or what I want. I don’t know what drives me. I was scared my output would reveal I'm a person I didn't like, or worse, I hated. in turn, I worried that if people didn’t like something I made, that would mean they didn’t like me.

although it is true that what you spend your life creating is influenced by who you are, you are more than your output. you are more complex than what you create, have more depth than what you do, and it’s impossible to capture your identity through a single piece of work.

build more brick walls. maybe you'll build a house someday.

final thoughts

this manifesto is frustrating in how simple and obvious it seems. some of these thirteen principles seemed inane, and others impactful. when laid out together, with the relationships drawn between them, all were revelatory. I had some sense of direction. I started doing and I started making.

the thing I did for most of my waking life, the only thing I felt good at, was slowly, terrifyingly, eating away at my sense of self and redefining my identity. the retreat of making helped me counter this, and gave me something I could completely control. my internal drive for making comes from wanting to develop my capacity freely, build my skills, better myself and explore. the act of making has taught me to appreciate this big, wide, wonderful world as much as I can.

build, and don't let anyone stop you.

my heartfelt thanks to Dylan Schiemann for providing me with a stage to tell my story at HalfStack London, Hugh Evans for helping me organise my thoughts and Willow Smith for helping me polish this draft until it shined. thank you all.