Never Finished

By Todd Henry

candle-both-ends

Here’s a tip for all of the perfectionists out there (including myself) :

It will never be good enough. It will never cease, and there will always be more to do.

How do I know this?

Because the work of art is never finished. As long as there are patterns to form, as long as there is meaning to discern, as long as there are realities to reveal, the mind will continue trying to do what it does. 

This doesn’t bode well for the restful artist. It’s important to set boundaries and establish solitary clauses – to define the space between parenthesis – so that we are not defined but given room to grow into the space we are intended to occupy. If we fail to create these boundaries we will inevitably find ourselves shrinking to the size of our latest idea, our unfinished projects, our deflated sense of self-worth. “I” becomes synonymous with all that’s left unexpressed. I am an unfinished sentence.

But if we approach our days with possibility and hope we can see not all that is left undone, but all that is left to do. It’s a subtle difference, but it can be the most significant difference in whether we are hope-less or hope-full.

We need to see what is unfinished as a gift to be unpacked rather than a burden to be born. It sounds trite, but I think that mindset is often the last domino to fall in the battle to re-align with what’s important. The battle of the artist is not with our materials, it’s between the ears.

Avatar of Todd Henry

About Todd Henry

Todd is the founder of Accidental Creative, the author of The Accidental Creative: How To Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice, and an in-demand speaker and consultant for creative teams. Connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.


RELATED ARTICLES:

FTC Disclosure: Some of the links in this article may be "affiliate" links, especially those to Amazon.com. AC will receive a commission if you buy the product through these links. We only endorse products we like.

THE BOOK:

Comments

  • peter

    “We need to see what is unfinished as a gift to be unpacked rather than a burden to be born”

    –That is REALLY hard to do! Good post!

  • Patty

    Right on point for me. Thank you for summing it up so nicely.

  • Lee

    “If we fail to create these boundaries we will inevitably find ourselves shrinking to the size of our latest idea, our unfinished projects, our deflated sense of self-worth.”
    This piece really spoke to me. A perpetual sense of “never enough” can be quite paralyzing!

  • http://www.electricorangecreative.com Lee

    This is very real and something I’ve been dealing with. Too often I stress about all the things I haven’t yet done but need to be doing, fretting over where I want to go.

  • http://andrewconard.com Andrew Conard

    As one who struggles with perfectionism, I very much appreciate the reminder. I particularly struggle with this when caring for members of the congregation which I serve. What is too much? What is enough? What is too little? Thank you.

  • Harold Thompson

    The more clearly defined the goals the easier it is to determine when the project is finished. The constant fiddling is often a personal thing and not necessarily for the client or patron. It’s interesting that my FB post this morning was about winning the war between my ears. :-)

  • http://AfterEffectsandPhotoshop.com Jeff Foster

    Wow Todd – very timely for me! I’ve taken on so many projects already this year (DVDs, speaking gigs, book) that I’m struggling getting anything moving forward and feel somewhat paralyzed because I keep thinking of stuff to add to each project to make it even “better”!

    Time to set my own boundaries and consider anything “extra” for a future project and leave well enough alone! ;)

    Thanks for the post!

    Jeff

  • Ron Eckberg

    We’ve all heard that the “good is the enemy of the best” but it is just as true that the “best is the enemy of the good”. I wonder how many books, songs and paintings were never finished because the artist could not get them perfect. There comes a point in every project where we have to pronounce it “finished”. We may or may not be 100% satisfied with the outcome, but we must move on, taking what we have learned — what we like and don’t like about what we’ve done — and putting those lessons to work in the next project. It is a never ending process, one which the true creative will wrestle with until the day he dies. That is wonderful mystery of the creative process!

  • Patti

    wow i’ve been struggling with this for a long time. part that really resonated with me:

    …shrinking to the size of our latest idea, our unfinished projects, our deflated sense of self-worth. “I” becomes synonymous with all that’s left unexpressed. I am an unfinished sentence.

    kinda understood it way in the back of my head, but this really does sum it up nicely and inspires me to set those boundaries once and for all.

    thanks so much :)

  • Tina Hill

    One of my favorite quotes is from a geologist, C.R. Van Hise in 1898:

    “The Earth is not finished, but is now being, and will forever more be remade.”

    If it’s good enough for the planet, I guess it’s good enough for me. I guess I can learn to accept the process rather than the end result.