Abandon or "Ah! Ban! Done!"?

'Art is never finished only abandoned' was painted on the wall of my secondary school art classroom. Like many things in school, I didn't think very hard about it but still it sat in my mind with more weight than it ever deserved by virtue of being in the place where lots of logical things that didn't gel with me were said. I suppose as an art installation it's succeeded because here I am using it as the basis for my post.

Although that's not entirely accurate. The basis for this post is the fact I have a lot of half finished posts drafted up and left unshared. Stories and coding projects I haven't approached seriously in far too long, yet they're pretty much entirely private and whatever scraps of it aren't useful for anything except taking up storage. The paint on a wall came to mind as a stronger opening than whining about my endless list of google docs files.

How do you decide when to abandon any creation? I don't think there's going to be a clean answer or process to determine the cutoff point.

• Ideas are a dime a dozen, so throw away anything when it reaches a wall.

  • Flow from start to finish is extremely rare but when it does happen it's a sign of confidence in the idea, and usually that you're onto something.
  • Starting lots of projects and having a rapid development loop is a good way to learn skills.
  • Usually it takes more than a few hours to see out an idea. There would be a lot of time investment and very little outcome if ideas were constantly left half finished.
  • Sustaining that flow, on ideas that lasted longer than a day of work, through other commitments and changing focus, would be difficult.
  • Less likely to experience burnout.

• Solely focus on one thing until it is as you envisioned it.

  • Somewhat works as long as there's a defined endpoint, and it is your soul focus. If you only have a single creation to focus on, this is survivable.
  • If you have shifting expectations or new ideas (and who can resist adjusting their expectations as a project goes on?) the project is now endless, the only thing you ever do with your life.
  • Encourages resiliance and dedication to a single task.
  • Requires thinking around obstacles, problems, and dead ends to make sure you get to the end of this no matter what.
  • Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to take a step back and let it tick along in the back of your mind.

As much as I want to call this two extremes on an axis, they really aren't. You can juggle projects, and it might be more practical to do so if they require specific resources or cooperation. But I think you can sort of morph between these examples, even if the premise of a neat axis breaks down quickly.

The length of the project, the confidence in the project, and the reward drive this decision. A short project you believe in that has a tangible reward is something you should grind hard at for that period. Something long, you aren't really feeling, and with a vague reward, feels like something to sit on the backburner to glance at when the mood strikes you. A serious, time consuming project, that you deeply believe in and rewards you, might fit becoming your sole focus.

And just to be clear, reward doesn't strictly mean monetarily (although it can), but rather how you feel after completing it. Some projects, especially those about learning, might be better off abandoning the moment the juice isn't worth the squeeze. What this means is open to interpretation. No, these answers aren't satisfying for me either.

Other thoughts and notes.

• Putting ideas out in the wild to get reactions, to make them 'real', and to make them some state of finalised is healthy and useful.
• There is something in reducing friction in returning to stuff. Making notes, writing guides to your creations, leaving tools in easy to access place. This way, even after months or years away from something, you can jog your memory and plunge back in. The counter point is that if you spend your time making sure everything is practical for strangers, you waste time you could be using to work on the damn thing. A lot of times an ugly, confusing, bad practice shortcut is worth it to keep momentum, especially if you can recognise the issue if you return.
• No idea should be taken off the table permenantly. But also something's level of completeness and the scale of the intended work, should drive whether it's worth returning to. Going to a single opening paragraph for a story you couldn't figure out is a better thing to try again than fine tuning sentence structures of a fully written story.

All these ideas have come spur of the moment (hence the impulsive tag). I quite like the idea of the time-confidence-reward tiers to judge how I work on stuff, so perhaps I'll post an update covering those projects. I'm certain it's not an original concept so I wonder if there are any more fleshed out examples out there.