Unfinished Business

Hah, you probably didn't think I could wait this long to write about finishing stuff. For the most part, I am a finisher. I would rather not start than never finish. I am in perpetual home renovation, but there is an issue of economy there.

In high school, I would probably give up if I waited too long to work on an assignment. I hated the thought of only being partially done with something, and somehow saw more honor in not finishing. By college, and beyond, I learned that there is more honor in finishing and you should not even discuss being incomplete.

Some people confuse these characteristics with perfectionism. Indeed, there are few areas in my life that I seek perfection. Maybe it is a philosophical "condition of man" type of issue, but I find perfectionism to be unreasonable and vain. For me, it is as strange as agoraphobia. I would rather get something done in a shorter amount of time than spend too much time getting it perfect. I am not talking about "git'r done," I take pride in what I do. But I don't derive too much self worth from it.

Take my office for example. Everything is in its place and I do not have stacks of papers and books lying around. When I leave for the day, 99% of the time my desk is entirely clear. I have a phone, pencil holder, web camera, PDA cradle, and the laptop's docking station on my desk. I still feel like there is one item too many (but my daughter made that ceramic pencil holder). I pretty much know where everything is in my file cabinet, which are mostly in order. (Okay, a major project this fall is to start reorganizing my personal files). Everything is dusted.

Some people may mistakenly confuse this with perfectionism -- however most perfectionists that I know cannot keep a clean working space or office. I had a colleague once that kept newspaper articles by gluing them on a sheet of paper with a typed statement on the margin that could be read on its side in a filing cabinet. This is quite impressive. However, it takes quite a lot of time to do this, and so a pile of these newspaper clippings would stack up on the desk (or worse, whole newspapers if it contained multiple items of interest). She would rather work in a mess than do something imperfect like tearing the article out and hand-writing the date, etc., on the paper and filing it away.

I once caught another colleague (one I still work with) painstakingly stapling 200 exams by hand because he did not like the way the automatic staples were placed by the copy machine. Yes, that's right, the copy machine would have organized and stapled these automatically while he was off doing something else. (The issue was that the staples were parallel to the top of the page, rather than neatly at an angle in the left top corner.) Fortunately, our current copier staples pages "correctly" and has easily saved him 40-50 hours a year.

Okay, so far it sounds like I am bragging at my ability to complete tasks because I am not burdened by distractions of perfection. However, I have a major flaw. I have always been a linear sequential thinker, and can usually focus on one task at a time. This is great when a report needs to be written (or a dissertation). Of course this is not so good if two reports need to be written, or if I started on a music/art/writing project in front of a more "real" task. Linear thinkers are probably the majority, but I sometimes feel that I have a more severe case. (I think it is more prevalent in left hemisphere people.)

This is good if you are one of my students requesting a written letter of recommendation for a job or graduate school. Most likely I will get it done the same day because I can't put it in a cue and come to it naturally. I have to get it done in a near immediate fashion. I can also work to music, even rather loud music, because I only absorb the sounds subconsciously. If you are trying to work on something, or write a report or paper, and the song on the radio keeps grabbing your attention, then you are not as afflicted in this area.

One of my summer tasks was to write the annual report for our department. I am of the opinion that only one other person will actually read this document, (but this one other person happens to be important). This summer, we couldn't start on it right away because some of the data was not available. Having that over me almost ruined my summer. In fact, I got the draft in rather late, which I can't stand. I also found out that my format from last year was mostly incorrect -- so it was a near complete revision of the format as well as writing about the new data. With that out of the way, I will probably have a productive week or two.

Please don't get the impression that I do shoddy work, however. I am often complimented on my timeliness, thoroughness, and creativity. However, when the chips are down and the time is getting late, perhaps I have been known on occasion to just git'r done.

I do have some perfectionism in me, though. A lot of this comes out in my writing. I deliberately write contractions into this blog to make me appear looser and not so uptight. On the other hand, I rarely use abbreviations if I think someone may get confused. I also revise my writing and read each blog entry twice (at least). If I come across an error in a blog entry from a previous year, I will still correct it.

This is even more obnoxious if you see my writing in MSN Messenger. There are no emoticons, no abbreviations, and a deliberate (shall I dare say 'pedantic') style of writing. I have painstakingly taught myself to use "LOL" even though I desperately want to write: "...that comment amused me..." or something cheeky like that.

--gh