Things that aren't doing the thing
34 comments
·November 15, 2025saulpw
jstummbillig
Certainly, but don't get confused: You are not doing the thing, until you do the thing.
There are many ways to do the thing. There are many more ways to not do the thing.
pac0
Writing about what things aren't doing the thing is not doing the thing.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt
Right but I see this taken too far. Getting side eyed for creating a Jira ticket not doing it now. Dude, I am creating a Jira ticket because I have 100 things to do and need to actual priorise this! If I do stuff in the order of serendipity I will definitely be inefficient.
thomascountz
I'm inspired by this and want to extend it, perhaps telescopically, by discussing what the thing is.
Sometimes we see our task as being, "do C," and we forget the "B" and "A" that come before.
Maybe you can't do "C" without discussing it ("B") or researching how others did it ("A"). In these cases, we shouldn't simply think the thing is "C"—the thing must first be "A," then "B," and then, "C."
If we forget this, we're bound to think "C" is the only thing of value, that it should take an hour and not a week, or that people doing the "A's" or "B's" to enable the "Cs" must be doing nothing at all!
acestus5
You pay a doctor for a consultation. saying you paid the doctor for medical school and for the legacy of doctors that came before him is.... wrong.
thomascountz
If you pay a doctor, the thing you're doing is paying a doctor. Your "A" or "B" might be booking the appointment or figuring out how to send the payment. I'm not sure I follow.
valiant55
It's not wrong, that's exactly what I'm paying them for. If they didn't have the education then they wouldn't be a doctor, and I wouldn't be seeing them for a consultation.
I'm well compensated not because I'm good at googling things, but because I have a proven track record of being good at googling things. If a junior was able to produce the same results they wouldnt be paid more.
hinkley
$5 for adjusting the screw. $495 for knowing which screw to adjust.
idiotsecant
If paying for medical school is not what youre doing why not just do your doctors appointment at Burger King?
null
cadamsdotcom
I wonder what thing the author was avoiding when they published this thing ;)
jader201
Maybe his thing was “write an article about things that aren’t doing the thing”. :)
hanslovsky
yep hev forgot to add "riding this blog post" to the list
nagisa
If you have no idea how to do the thing, isn't reading about how others did the thing doing the thing?
rtpg
This hints at the antithesis to this article
Doing a thing involves doing it, but it's very unlikely that doing a thing will involve exactly one atomic movement. So you have cutpoints at doing the thing.
So to do the thing you first have to decide to do the thing. You have to decide what the thing is, or at least have enough of a vision of the thing to take the first step at doing a thing that might look like the thing.
So "doing the thing" involves a lot of doing things that aren't the thing, but without which you won't get towards the thing.
In other words: sitting down and writing down what the thing is _can very well_ be part of doing the thing.
There's a sort of philosophical point too, about whether the thing is what you think it is. Plenty of people have had the "I thought this feature was going to do X, you thought it was going to do Y, and we all realised the mismatch very late in the process".
I think both visions of the world are valid, and things you can keep in your mind at the same time to deploy as needed.
ahazred8ta
"Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be entreated not to hit the nail at all." -- Nietzsche
manmal
No, you’ll still need to do it.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt
Yes just do it without knowing how to do it! That always works out well.
jader201
But learning about, while possibly a prerequisite, still isn’t getting it done.
The point is: don’t stop at learning how to do the thing.
Actually do the thing.
johnfn
Marketing is absolutely doing the thing; ignore this to your peril. I don't think reality is quite as binary as this post suggests.
bix6
But that would be doing the thing after you’ve done the thing no?
johnfn
I think you really want to be marketing concurrently with doing the thing. Saving it all for the end is probably a mistake. And a lot of projects don't have defined "end"s, like open source projects, or websites.
pointlessone
That depends. If OP’s job is marketing then doing it before is doing the thing even if it pisses off the people who’ll have to do the thing OP made up.
afandian
One day, when I get enough spare time, I will make the thing. I even have some components ready.
Until then I daydream of how I will make it and how it will fit together.
If I never get round to it then that time will have been wasted. But if I do, all that daydreaming will have been useful mental prototyping.
But was it «doing the thing»?
mjd
LinkedIn is over there.
onionisafruit
Having a meeting about doing the thing isn’t doing the thing
gentooflux
Writing a thing about things that aren't doing the thing isn't doing the thing unless the thing happens to be writing a thing about things that aren't doing the thing
behnamoh
Writing a comment about a thing that talks about things that aren't doing the thing isn't doing the thing unless the thing happens to be writing a comment about a thing that talks about things that aren't doing the thing
nrhrjrjrjtntbt
Writing a Python program to write N deep nested sentences on how writing a comment about a comment about a .... (N times) comment is not doing the thing is not doing the thing.
brettgriffin
This gives very strong War of Art (Pressfield) vibes.
As simple as it is, just remembering this is enough to make me go do the thing.
And on that note, back to the thing.
In the Viable System Model[0], "doing the thing" is System 1. Yes of course you need System 1 or the thing won't get done.
But in any viable system, you also have the "meta-systems", Systems 2-5:
- System 2: coordination between multiple Systems 1 (which includes prioritization, communication, and exceptional conditions)
- System 3: resource allocation and process development
- System 4: strategy and risk management
- System 5: values and holistic organizational design
As a human, you are also striving to be a viable system. You can't only just "do the thing", you have to:
- prioritize which thing to do
- take notes and keep records to communicate between past and future versions of yourself
- make sure you have the requisite resources for doing the thing
- construct your environment and processes for long-term success (habits not motivation)
- consider what happens when the thing is done and how it fits into your larger strategy
- keep your head and heart connected to make sure you're doing the right thing
None of these things are doing the thing! But they're also rather essential for getting the right things done well.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model