Do I Need To Finish?
Exploring the Value of Incompleteness
“Finish what you start.”“You’ve come this far. Don’t stop here.”“Don’t be a quitter.”“Prove that you’re not the type who gives up early.”These thoughts swirl through my head. I notice resistance…lots of it.
I’m noticing a common theme in my writing, my reading, and my creative projects:
Starting something. Work on it for days, even months. Then put it down, incomplete, unfinished. On to the next.
Is this a problem?
I ask myself
Am I a bad person for leaving it in draft mode?
Do I lack the grit to see it through?
Is this a symptom of a deeper insecurity?
Am I actually too ADHD and scattered to focus on one thing?
Is there value in incompletion?
The Pros of Finishing
I can see why there’s cultural conviction around finishing something you start. It speaks to your tenacity. We value grittiness.
Research even points to grit—a combination of passion and perseverance for a singularly important goal—as the hallmark of high achievers in every domain.
Gritty people finish shit. Those who lack grit don’t.
This is why we love stories of people overcoming adversity to finally achieve their goals and dreams. Grit is inspirational.
Finishing what you start also paints a picture of someone who is trustworthy, reliable, and competent. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you’re assigned a work task, don’t abandon it halfway. That certainly doesn’t reflect well on you as an employee.
Finishing creates a nice little bowtie around a task or project. It says, “All done. Look how pretty this is. It’s complete. We can clean up and move on.”
Finishing is like graduation — it turns a verb into a noun.
Finishing also ensures throughput. It keeps the production-consumption machine in motion.
As such, finishing is intimately intertwined with our modes of production. A finished product can be moved, traded, sold, or distributed. It becomes an asset or commodity available for exchange. And within our prevailing system, this gives it value.
For this reason, not finishing, makes me feel like a failure.
I’ve failed to produce something of value. I’ve spun my wheels, got my hands messy, and there’s nothing to show of it.
Or is there?
Is the value not in the finished product but in the act of creation?
The Art of Unfinished
My resistance to finishing is, in part, resistance to commodification.
I don’t want to reify my writing or work. It’s alive. It’s still in formation.
Finishing — hitting publish, share, post — launches it from the workshop into the world. “But it’s not done,” I shout.
Is it truly ever done?
My uncle, a wizened woodworker, has a quote hanging in his shop that says:
Revision is endless. There is only death.
I don’t want my project to die. I want it to live on and continue to grow.
(But is endless growth a good thing? Isn’t that cancer?)
I’m afraid that finishing it will lead to its slow decay.
(But isn’t decay a good thing? It gives birth to new life.)
Am I being overly protective? Am I not seeing how keeping something in eternal draft mode is a type of purgatory.
Maybe my work is screaming to me to be released into the world. Am I too deaf to hear its pleas?
When does a writer need to share his writing? When does a musician need to share her music? When does an artist need to share her art?
Am I truly a writer if no one ever sees my writing? Can I claim that identity?
How can I reconcile creating something for the sake of creating, creating something for others, and creating something for myself that can be enjoyed by others?
I can see how one could argue that I’m being selfish. What value does incomplete work have sitting on my computer with no eyes, hands, or hearts to engage with it?
It’s dormant. Fallow. A seed waiting for moist soil to root and begin its next phase of life.
Perhaps this is a better way to view incomplete: Neither finished nor unfinished, but in a fallow stage of an ongoing lifecycle waiting for the right time to blossom.
The Unfinished Product Is Me
I work on something. The work brings me value. Once I’ve created meaning, built understanding, and extracted what I need, I move on. It has contributed to my evolution.
When I am present and awake, I see myself as being reshaped and transformed every moment by the action of the universe, of which I am a part
The work itself becomes merely a tool for my own growth. Whether it is finished or not is unimportant. It is not the thing that I’m truly working on.
I am the incomplete work.