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LM: #364: Finishing is a choice
If you’ve ever done something you didn’t feel like doing, or not done something you felt like doing, you already know something about finishing projects.
Finishing projects is unnatural. The world changes constantly and so nothing stays still. The creative process requires an open mind, yet finishing requires a closed one.
But we do many things that go against our instincts.
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- Maybe you’ve wanted to snap at a colleague, partner, or child, but didn’t
- Maybe you’ve been attracted to someone besides your spouse and didn’t act
- Maybe you didn’t have just one beer because you knew you’d keep going
- Maybe you went to the gym when you didn’t feel like it
To finish is absurd and illogical. As George Carlin said, “Art doesn’t have a finish line.”
But it’s something you do because you value it. When you have a value, you will act in ways that don’t make immediate sense. That’s how an equation works out when one variable has more value than expected.
Finishing is something you choose despite your instincts and impulses. Like exercise, sobriety, non-violence, and monogamy, it’s unnatural, often inconvenient, and entirely up to you.
Aphorism: “To Finish requires a heart of steel. You have to make decisions all the time, and I am finding difficulties where I thought there would be none. The only way I can keep up this life is to go to bed early and do nothing whatsoever outside my work, and I am sustained in my resolution to give up every pleasure, and most of all that of seeing the people I love, only by the hope of carrying the work through to completion. I think it will kill me.” —Eugène Delacroix
Cool: David Daines is planning a year without screens.
Best,
David
P.S. Zettelkasten Digital: Ya disponible en español!
