National Public Radio runs a show called “The Story.” Tonight’s story (listen here) was about a group of three well-known musicians (Amanda Palmer, Ben Folds of TV’s Sing-Off, and Damian Kulash of OK-Go), a famous writer/lyricist (Neil Gaiman) and a producer (Sean Slade) who decided to try an experiment this past April.  They wanted to see if it was possible to produce a music album of eight original songs in eight hours, completely from scratch.  They called the project, “Eight in Eight” and the album they produced is called “Nighty Night.”

The group didn’t quite meet their ambitious goal.  After 12 hours, they stopped with only six songs under their belts — an impressive feat, nonetheless.  As to whether or not the set of six songs is worthy of being considered a full-fledged album release?  Well, it sounded good to me, but you can judge for yourself.  Listen to the album online for free at http://music.amandapalmer.net/releases, or download it for a minimum donation of $1.

If you listen to the The Story episode, you’ll get a small sense of the power that a self-imposed, extremely tight deadline can have on a project.  We did the same thing one Saturday last January when we ran a programmer’s hack-a-thon in Irvine.  What we found happening was this:

1. The 80/20 rule kicked in big time.  That’s the rule that says that 80% of the value of a project comes in the first 20% of the effort.  The curse of the perfectionist is that that he or she will continue to spend another 80% of effort in order to bring the value up from 80% to 100%.  When we imposed an impossible deadline, we forced the issue and declared that we’ll gladly take something approaching 80% value for something approaching 20% effort.
2. Collaboration happened so fast, our heads were spinning.   There was no time to argue about nuances, and so nobody tried.  The minute a discussion leaned in one direction or another, that was our decision.  Done deal.  What’s next?
3. False starts, wrong turns, and dead ends got abandoned even faster.  Hardly any time was wasted trying to fix a lost cause.  And certainly no time was wasted trying to fix blame.  As we were collaborating at the speed of light, mistakes were bound to happen, and everyone knew it.  Oops!  Oh, well.  Let’s try that again.

Try it yourself.  If a hack-a-thon crops up in your neck of the woods, I highly suggest you jump at the chance to participate.  If no one else starts one, consider running one of your own.  E-mail me and I’ll help you get started.  You’ll be amazed at how much can get accomplished in a tiny amount of time when the conditions are right.