Finish Work and Productivity
A few weeks ago, I got a wild hair to transform my front porch. Objects were cleared, shutters rehung, rails stained, new furniture bought and assembled. Two hundred and fifty six square feet of previously unused space was now reclaimed for both work and recreation, just in time for Louisiana's two days of spring.
While my husband and I spent more than a few days on the comfort of our new porch, I could not get any reasonable amount of work done while I was in that space. I kept seeing the overhead light bulbs that had gone unchanged since the installation of black lights during Halloween, the unstained porch gate that had been skipped in the previous fervor, and the unkempt weeds masquerading as our yard. In short, the job was not done.
Slowly I tackled the items that bugged me so much. I took down the Halloween lights, and have kept vigilant watch on the weather for the day when conditions fall within the manufacturer's guidelines for applying stain to the gate. While I wrestled with the lawnmower in an attempt to tame the overgrown yard, I realized that most of my distraction could be attributed to one thing: finish work.
In my tenure as an art student finish work was drilled home on every project. You could produce a masterwork, but if the finish work was neglected there was no chance of earning an "A" or even a "B" on the project. Besides giving off an air of shoddy craftsmanship, finish work left undone stole an entire level of professionalism from a piece.
Beyond the obvious payoff of producing finely crafted and professional work, finish work gives us more, even on the smallest of tasks. It gives us productivity. Finish work left undone, from failing to staple a completed report to leaving the dishes in the dishwasher at the end of the cleaning cycle, eats at the edges of our attention span and distracts us from the task at hand. We may not even be aware of it, but the lack of "polish" on even the most mundane of jobs steals our time.
Make yourself a list of "unfinished" tasks. My personal list includes large tasks such as completing the trim paint in the living room to small tasks such as putting the boxed holiday decorations back in the attic. Once those items are really finished, how much brain clutter will you have cleared up? How much time will you have back without having to worry about them anymore?
While my husband and I spent more than a few days on the comfort of our new porch, I could not get any reasonable amount of work done while I was in that space. I kept seeing the overhead light bulbs that had gone unchanged since the installation of black lights during Halloween, the unstained porch gate that had been skipped in the previous fervor, and the unkempt weeds masquerading as our yard. In short, the job was not done.
Slowly I tackled the items that bugged me so much. I took down the Halloween lights, and have kept vigilant watch on the weather for the day when conditions fall within the manufacturer's guidelines for applying stain to the gate. While I wrestled with the lawnmower in an attempt to tame the overgrown yard, I realized that most of my distraction could be attributed to one thing: finish work.
In my tenure as an art student finish work was drilled home on every project. You could produce a masterwork, but if the finish work was neglected there was no chance of earning an "A" or even a "B" on the project. Besides giving off an air of shoddy craftsmanship, finish work left undone stole an entire level of professionalism from a piece.
Beyond the obvious payoff of producing finely crafted and professional work, finish work gives us more, even on the smallest of tasks. It gives us productivity. Finish work left undone, from failing to staple a completed report to leaving the dishes in the dishwasher at the end of the cleaning cycle, eats at the edges of our attention span and distracts us from the task at hand. We may not even be aware of it, but the lack of "polish" on even the most mundane of jobs steals our time.
Make yourself a list of "unfinished" tasks. My personal list includes large tasks such as completing the trim paint in the living room to small tasks such as putting the boxed holiday decorations back in the attic. Once those items are really finished, how much brain clutter will you have cleared up? How much time will you have back without having to worry about them anymore?
posted by wlturland at
8:00 AM
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