I’ve been so proud of myself. I committed to only working on one craft project at a time. It’s been great – I have finished things that have been languishing for years.
And then in early December, I went looking for my next project. And lo and behold, I discovered six projects that were not done. Oh, the crafting part was done. But the objects hadn’t been finished into their final state, e.g. framed and ready for display.
It’s not that getting these things framed will take long. But I just put it off because I considered the project “done”.
Why It’s Important to Really Finish Things
“Open loops” are things that things that pull at our attention. We may be doing something completely unrelated, and yet there are little things pulling our attention away.
When projects are not completely finished, they pull at our attention.
Example: The Cow Salt Shaker
One of the features of my kitchen is the herd of decorative cows. There are so many that they have flowed onto a wall separating kitchen from living room. During Thanksgiving, one of them met with an accident, and I needed to glue her horn back on.
But of course, that needed super glue. So I put “get super glue” on my list, purchased it, and put it on the desk where the cow was residing.
Every time I sat down at my desk, I saw the cow, saw the super glue…and did nothing about it.
I realized that there were several projects like this sitting on my desk…and it was growing difficult to concentrate every time I was there.
So I took 10 minutes and really finished each of those projects. And gained back concentration when I sat down to work.
It Comes Back To What “Done” Is
It always comes back to what you consider done.
At some level, I figured I was done with the craft projects when I finished stitching. I figured I was done with the cow when I had the ability to mend it.
My husband believes that emptying the dishwasher means putting all the clean dishes on the cupboards (”they’re not in the dishwasher”), rather than putting them away.
My daughter believes that laundry is done when it comes out of the dryer and lands in a basket. Even if the basket stays in the kitchen for a week. (My laundry is “done” when it is piled on my dresser)
I believe that every single person has a tendency to leave certain things with more to do on them, because everyone’s definition of done is different.
Why Define Done
One of the things I am required to do in my professional life is to define “done” with regard to every programming task I do.
This serves two purposes: first, so that we know what is relevant and what is extra; and second so that everyone involved knows whether or not the task has been accomplished.
It may seem obvious, but one of my clients routinely closed company-wide projects before the programming even started.
We use that definition of done to allow us to decide if what we are doing every day moves toward the goal. If somebody comes with a new idea, we hold it up to the definition and decide if it goes into the code base.
It saves us a lot of time – and a lot of rework. My team doesn’t build a backlog of future work because we make sure we are truly done before we move on.
Why Is It Undone?
While having the formalized process of deciding on done at work, it is harder for me to do at home. Talking to others, I find that this is not uncommon, even among my colleagues for whom it is second nature at work.
I suspect that this is because I don’t have to produce written documentation of everything like I do at work. 🙂
So how can I translate that focus on the outcome to my personal life?
I’ve spent some time during the last few months looking at what ends up lingering, and I’ve noticed some commonalities.
All of the projects left undone:
- Had the majority of the work done
- Didn’t have the materials on hand to complete
- Had undone parts were very different than what was completed
Knowing the commonalities lead to a method to go forward. But I also realized that I wasn’t stopping to consider these things before I move on to the next project.
The End Questions At The Next Start
In the end, I decided to pause at the start of a new project and consider the one I just finished. I asked myself if the project was really done, and if not, what needed to be done.
I chose to do this at the start of the next project because I had already established doing one project at a time – and because I met with better success in remembering if I did it in the beginning of a new rather than the end of the old.
I found that by simply considering whether a project was truly done was enough to stop these unfinished projects from accumulating.
In the end, by taking the time to truly complete each project, including those final small steps, we free ourselves from the cognitive load of open loops and incomplete tasks. The key is to redefine what “done” means for each project at its outset, and to resist the urge to move on until that definition is met. This simple shift in mindset can lead to greater productivity, reduced stress, and the satisfaction of truly completed work.
