The joy of finishing things—or not finishing things

Do we need to finish everything we start? It depends. On most things, I would say ‘yes’. Some would say you should always finish whatever you start. A compelling case can be made for that viewpoint. Then there’s the old ‘If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well’ meme. That’s always a tried and true saying. I guess I never bought into that one much. I feel like some things are just worth doing well enough so that you can get them over with. Kind of like taking out the trash, I don’t feel compelled to achieve any level of excellence in that task as long as the job gets done. You can debate with me on that one if you want.

But finishing what you start—that one sounds convincing at the outset. I know there’s a long list of things I could go over in my head that I’m certainly glad I finished: High School, Dinner—so that I could get dessert, driving home from the airport (If I hadn’t finished that, I still wouldn’t be here yet), and countless other things that we don’t even think about. If nothing else, it does give you a sense of accomplishment. You feel proud of yourself for seeing things through. And it’s good you finished many of them because it was that pattern of successfully finishing things that got you where you are today.

However, what if you get into something a considerable ways and you begin to wonder if it’s even worth your time. Kind of like reading a book that’s really bad, pointless and boring. If you’ve ever found yourself reading one of these books you begin to wonder, “Why am I reading this, anyway? I don’t really have any interest in this topic. Even if I did I wouldn’t enjoy it because the writer makes it about as interesting as watching cement dry.” I’ve even seen this question discussed on book reading forums: “Should you finish a book you’re not enjoying?” There seems to be a something of a consensus on this issue because just about all the serious readers on there have a DNF list. (That stands for ‘Did Not Finish’.) So, it seems there’s a case to be made for cutting your losses and moving on to bigger and better things. I even once held off finishing a 1200-page book I was only pages from finishing because I didn’t like the way it was going to end. I said to myself, “I can see where this is headed and I don’t like it.” Yeah, there’s a downside to foreshadowing. You authors keep that in mind.

I guess you could say that a person attains some level of joy in not finishing something if they know that it’s not worthwhile. If our only goal is to finish everything we start, then we can easily find ourselves wasting time on some meaningless pursuits. Maybe we need to qualify that goal. Maybe we need to change it to ‘finish what you start that’s worth starting in the first place’.
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