What Level of Done Is Done? — Knowing When a Project or Goal Is Complete

Hello, my friends. This week we're talking about how you know when something in your life is complete, or how you decide when your projects are complete, or basically all the nitty gritty of getting into things that you started and wondering if it's time to keep going, time to push harder, time to let it go, time to adjust.

I think it's a skill that we kind of, I don't know, I don't know that it's taught necessarily or it's something that we acquire when we're in school as children.

I think we're all very accustomed to having deadlines and knowing that there's a certain point where we have to hand something in or walk away from it.

I've also worked as an artist a lot of my life, so there's also a creative process that has a different kind of relationship with completion and it's a lot more personally driven where you have to decide when are you done? When are you gonna walk away from something and stop messing with it?

And I think that's probably more akin to what we experience in our own lives once we're adults, trying to make sense of our own personal goals and just maintaining the house and deciding:

How much is enough? How far do we want to go with everything? Complete a project or move on to the next thing?

I also think that we are very compelled to always replace one project with another and if we find one thing closing and completing, we don't feel very comfortable with having long periods of space in between next projects.

It's definitely something that I talk about so much here on the podcast is trying to just struggle with it myself and figure out.

What the heck do we need to be doing? How much is an actual need and how much of it is a manufactured need that we feel compelled to just keep doing because we are caught in it and it's how we've been living and it's what we're doing?

I'm very much trying to find where I feel most nourished and nurtured and follow a flow that feels...

For me, more like returning to seasonality, returning to my weird nostalgia about how life may have been once that I don't think ever actually existed, but how I wonder if it would feel if I was more of a wild thing and had no outside unnatural influence telling me where my motivation should lie.

It's tricky because I think even wild creatures, like they're not in a void, they definitely are told what to cultivate and not cultivate and do and where to go based on are they, you know, having something chase them down to eat them. Are they running out of food? Where do they need to go to find stuff?

But I think in my mind I've equated that as like a more natural process where you're reacting to something real.

And I think of our culture and society and all the demands placed on us as somewhat unnatural.

I don't know that that's necessarily true. I'm trying to break that down for myself and stop believing that everything about society is made up and a lie.

But currently I'm feeling a little stressed out. I'm not sure if you listening to it also are, but I feel under a lot of pressure all the time to try to figure out where I need to measure up against other people, where I need to measure up against myself to prepare for retirement or some kind of future that for a long time felt very far away and now feels very close, that I don't know that we ever feel prepared for.

I think, you know, earlier in life, it was barreling towards that, are you going to get married? Are you going to buy a house? Where are you going to live? And then, are you going to have children? And then you have a child or you don't.

And I have a child and then it's where you're going to send her to school and how is that going to go? And I remember all of these crippling decisions about even where to send this kid to like kindergarten. And it seemed like such a very difficult decision to make and what came up for me in all of that is that we have such a crazy amount of inputs and choices presented to us constantly all the time now.

On a scale that is beyond what our parents had, and it's beyond what their parents had, and it's beyond what their parents had.

So we have moved very far from the amount of decisions that we had to make as a human living in society, maybe 100 or 200 years ago, to a person living in society today.

I remember recording an episode for my previous podcast, and it was about my incredible sense of inadequacy, just trying to make a decision about where my kid should go to kindergarten.

And this kind of thing used to be basically decided for you just based on where do you live? Where's the bus route and where's that kid going to school? And you never really thought much more deeply about that. Like you thought about it when you were deciding where you were going to live, but sometimes you couldn't.

And when it came time, you just had to trust like, hey, my kid's gonna go to school just like I had to go to school.

We're gonna figure out how she gets along with her teachers and everything and do the best for her here.

And then we fast-forwarded like beyond when I grew up where it really was just like where do you live? Here's the bus, get on it, go to school.

To, are you going to drive your kid to school? How many activities is she going to do? Preschool? How many years of preschool? What kind of activities is she doing before to help her socialize and learn her alphabet and all this stuff?

It's like you're almost competing your child in education before they even are four years old and going to kindergarten or five years old and going to kindergarten.

Following that up with, there's like five different choices. Do you want to go to this magnet school or that magnet school or go for a STEM school? Do you want to be setting her up for like a Yale education later and what kind of tutoring are you going to do? Are you going to go to the regular school that's here? Which one's going to help with special needs?

Which one has these better programs, and it felt so incredibly overwhelming and crushing.

And my kid hadn't even gone to day one yet of what should have been kindergarten where you're like just learning how to be in a classroom and how to like, listen to a teacher and sit at a desk and all of those basic skills.

And it made me go, "Where have we gone as a society that it has gotten this hard?"

And as a parent, you feel like so... humbled and crippled trying to make these decisions and wondering, like, if every decision I make is like this domino effect in the future, where is it going? And if I choose wrong, like, have I changed her whole entire life's trajectory by picking the wrong school?

Oh my goodness, it's hard. So I bring all of that up to say no matter where you are, like whether you're deciding what activity you want to do as a hobby or which group to join, what book to read.

It seems like there's so much judgment and so many places online and in person, just (I don't even know if they really exist!) that feel like you have somewhere to show off to or something to live up to, and you're constantly hearing more input about what's possible.

What someone else embraced and what they ended up doing and how that, you know, set up their life for infinite success or infinite failure. And because we're human, we really take these stories in and we take them to heart and we're like, shoot, I want to learn from this.

How can I make the best decision possible for myself, for my future, for my family, for my kids, for my friends, for my pets, whatever it is?

And it turns into like an agonizing mental wheel. You could spend days, weeks, hours, years thinking about all this stuff and barely doing anything or kind of going through the motions of doing stuff without even really engaging it.

Because as soon as you make a decision, another one comes down on the line and you're like, "Oh no, now how do I make this decision? And how do I incorporate that into everything else that's going on? And how do I prepare?"

It has become deeply difficult to figure out what you owe to society or what you're supposed to live up to versus what might have come or risen from within yourself authentically.

So I, for better or ill, spend a lot of time pondering for myself.

What is arising from within? What would I be doing if nothing was telling me what to do where there was no demand? Or if I said, like, you know, I wanted to sit and draw a picture of an apple today and enjoy an apple and go for a walk and see the sunshine that no one would judge that in any way whatsoever that it could just be a thing that I did.

I think also this stress of picking careers and picking programs like oh my gosh it's just continuous so...

As much as I just derailed myself there, the point of it is to say, our lives are really stressful.

And because we have so many parallel and perpendicular lines of engagement going at all times, trying to decide when you're done with something also is another decision that we have to make and it can lead us to feeling kind of inadequate or confused.

Or like maybe we should keep doing something because we started it. Or maybe we're not sure when anything is done anymore because sometimes we're like really looking for someone outside of ourselves to give us an indication of what we're supposed to do when something's supposed to be done.

Give us that little stamp of approval and send us on to the next task.

In some ways I really miss and envy, like that childhood experience of being in school because it seemed like it was pretty clear cut. Like something got put on your desk, you got told what to do, you had to do it when you completed it, it was done, and then you got the next task, and life becomes progressively levels of difficulty more. As you stop getting handed tasks and you have to come up with them on your own and figure out where you're going.

So at this point, I'm looking at my year and going, okay, how many irons do I have in the fire?

How many projects, ideas, ambitions do I have? What effort am I putting into them? What's been...

Proving like it has some traction or brings some satisfaction to me personally or to the people around me.

What's productive, what needs to happen. So all of this is happening in relation to how I'm really living. I can't look at any of it and separate it from the effect it has on my family and on my general daily dynamic on my relationships with my friends and with my husband and my daughter and my mother-in-law and everyone who lives here.

I have to look at it in that context. And I'm trying to look at it through the lens of, well, what do I do that really matters?

And how many things am I doing or adding stress to my life trying to figure out that maybe aren't that effective or that I'm not enjoying or that aren't delivering what I thought I would get out of the experience?

When I try to break it down that way instead of asking, you know, what makes the perfect retirement or how do I improve this relationship to be just better?

And I look at it as what things are already happening, what things are already going.

What activities? What expenses? What actions? What inactions? Like, what's my normal daily habits? And how is that?

Where's their friction? Where are things pretty smooth? What am I craving and desperate for?

And the way that I determine the feedback on all of that really is to highlight where's the most friction and pain? Where am I so frustrated? What is the thing that I'm frustrated about?

I find when I start getting really, um, titchy with everybody; where frustration is really high where I'm snapping at people where I feel like I'm not having enough space. That's where I have to look and go, "Okay, what is it that I need that I'm not getting that's making me feel so frustrated in these particular circumstances?"

And I can definitely share that for me, my frustration will always bubble up when it comes to interacting with everybody and feeling like I need to direct more than I want to, or that I need to be present for someone else for their choices, where I'm like, can't you just make your own choice?

So I'm personally realizing like the thing that I'm complete with or that I'm ready to let go is having such a strong hand in determining what decisions my kid makes for everything. I'm ready to start letting go of some of that and giving her more responsibility and letting her make some more mistakes.

Figure out some consequences, and I'm actually feeling really happy about it that it's early enough that any mistakes will not be dire. Everything is correctable, but I need the practice in letting go.

And I'm realizing that I need to get complete with letting go a little bit more, and that that's really hard for me. And then I like having control.

But I think some of the frustration that comes up around my year and where I see most of my conflicts is feeling like I have things that I want to do and creativity that I want to express, and I never quite feel like I get the space or time to do it.

And that's in part my fault. I need to figure out how to set up that space and how to put up those boundaries and where I can look for help and where I can see that I'm contributing or making it easier for there to be problems. So that's definitely the one that I'm wrangling with right now.

But here's the thing that I want to point out. When I say I want to be complete with all this frustration and trying to do things that are being ineffective,

It's not just an arbitrary decision, it's something that's coming from deep within myself.

It's through observation. It's definitely through looking at the whole big picture of my life and going,

"What can survive if I take back some responsibilities and move them over to a different area?"

If I say, you know, I'm complete with trying to force myself to do weightlifting exercises every day, and I want to do it this way instead.

That's okay. This is me having my relationship with my own projects and my own desires. It's me trying to tap into what's the purpose behind all the things that I said I wanted to do.

And can I still move towards that purpose without hurting myself or frustrating myself even more? How can I make it a little bit easier and a little bit more accessible for myself and hopefully steer myself clear of then creating conflict in other areas of my life where I don't need excess stress?

I think for each of us, it's such an individual dance to figure out what we need and what we didn't get.

I think it's also an individual experience to, I guess, assess everything going on and decide what we still have energy for.

It's a tender moment when you get to this point where you realize, "I don't have all the energy in the world and I can't keep going at full speed all the time, the way that I have been."

And I think it's natural that we accelerate a lot during the summer and we do a lot of things and we naturally feel more social and more excited and we're getting out there and doing stuff.

And for me, I hit this phase where, you know, now we're in the middle of October, and I'm over it. I don't want to have to do so much anymore.

The frustration that I felt at the beginning of September was intense, just realizing that I need a break. I need to be left alone more. I need some quiet to be able to even have these thoughts.

And it's only as we move away from that initial transition at the end of the summer and to the true quiet of the fall that we realize that we need that space and we need that slowing down and that maybe we actually do have it and we should take advantage of it and not feel so guilty for stepping back, quieting, I guess, stepping back from bold interactions.

I find this to be a really internal kind of season where I'm moving more towards that hibernating self that wants rest and to be able to have enough time to feel as well as to think through all of the things that happened or didn't happen over the year.

So really, when we're deciding that a project or an idea or a goal that we had is complete, sometimes it's as easy as going, "Yeah, I totally did that and all the things are done. Check, check, check."

And other times it's about saying, "You know, I got halfway through this and realized that I don't need it anymore."

"I got halfway through it and realized that I set myself up to kind of fail here because there's no way I can continue on this pace, so the goal post or what I'm aiming for needs to be readjusted."

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And I think it's important that we acknowledge that we are not stagnant. We don't start out on a marble run as a like one little marble and we end as the same exact marble. Like that's not how we are.

When we're going through life and up and down hills and getting caught on things. We're changing and we're evolving and the shape and color and desire of us and the velocity changes. And because of that, we need to adjust where we're going and what we want to do to or if not where we're going, how we're getting there and that's fine.

And it's so wonderful when we finally give that to ourselves. I think at this time of year I feel very comforted by telling myself, you know, not every single thing needs a final push this year.

There is not some magnificent goal post that if I get through I'm suddenly going to be acknowledged and showered with all of the praise, affection, and wealth in the world. It's like what my, my tiny little self wants. We all want that to be like, if I manage all of my goals and I get through like the giant gold post, ha ha, and I did it.

We are expecting or wanting on some level, like the big confetti spill and everybody cheering for us and like we get a crown and acknowledgments and whatever, but that isn't how life really is.

Often when we get through a goal post, nobody even notices or cares. It's completely something we set up or even if other people told us to do it. They've already moved on and forgotten about it because they're in their own stuff anyway.

When I realized that, it's what makes me crave that connection to my wild self, it makes me go, "Okay, I don't need to perform my life so much because

The goalposts, even ones that other people give to me, they're not that hung up on it. It seems like it in the moment. It seems like it when they give me this stuff. It seems like they're judging me, but so much of that is just me recreating it in my head and deciding how it is and how other people think and feel. It's not reality.

And no matter what I do, there isn't probably going to be a giant celebration for me about how I managed to, you know, play viola every day for five weeks or whatever it is that I've tried to do. I can be really proud of myself for that.

But I have to be honest with myself that no one else really cares. And in a way that feels liberating and not sad.

I want to be honest that people care about me, they want me to do well. But they are not as hung up about the particulars of how I do it as I am.

And when I get clear about that with myself, everything becomes a lot easier and more maneuverable and negotiable.

I want that for all of you too, to be able to look at your lives and look at your goals and look at all the things that you've been pushing really hard for and be able to take a breath and go, "Okay. At what pace now?"

Is it still in the school? Do I need this many? Is some of this okay to set aside for next year? Is some of this already done? Was it done months ago and I'm still holding on to it as though it isn't?What level of done is done?

For me, right now at this time, understanding that you can always pick things back up.

You can always re-examine goals and re-examine entire situations and events and activities and things that you want to work on. None of it is truly done because we're living, we're moving through everything and it's always going to evolve.

My friends, I am sending you tons of love. Lots of just hope that we can all support each other in taking a big exhalation and letting some stuff go this week and letting some stuff go for this season.

And really love ourselves for everything that already has happened, all of the things that we already have done, and the things we did amazingly, and the things we're just about ready to call complete.

We've all worked really hard and existed really well this year.

So I'm acknowledging that and sending all that love to you. Next week I want to talk about the emotional weight of letting go, why it's hard sometimes to let a goal go or come to terms with moving through and beyond something.

Also, part of the creative process. So I look forward to seeing you next week and have a wonderful week until then.

Completing the Honest Year Review series:

This episode brings the autumn year-review arc to its natural conclusion: having laid out what happened, read the feedback, found what was real, and questioned the standards, we finally ask — what's done?

• Ep 50: What Counts as Enough — Redefining Accomplishment Beyond Society's Standards — Last week's foundation: once you've released society's ruler for "enough," you can honestly assess what's complete.
• Ep 49: What Was Real This Year — What Your Actions Tell You About Your True Values — Knowing what was real and aligned is how you tell a genuine completion from mere abandonment.
• Ep 48: Reading the Feedback From Your Year — What Your Efforts Actually Produced — The lived evidence — traction, satisfaction, friction — that informs which projects deserve a final push and which don't.

Explore further:

• Ep 29: How to Decide What to Keep Doing (and What to Let Go Of) — The pruning companion to this episode: allowing some things to fall away so what truly matters can thrive.
• Ep 28: How to Scale Back Without Giving Up on Your Goals — For the goals that need readjusting rather than releasing: recalibrating without abandoning what you care about.

✨ Ready to set something down — and feel good about it?

If this episode has you looking at your goalpost pile and asking what's truly done, the Living in Rhythm Starter Kit is the perfect companion. This free resource helps you identify your real values and move with your feelings instead of against them — so what you carry forward, adjust, or release comes from your own rhythm, not outside demands.

Download the free Living in Rhythm Starter Kit