Project Wisdom

Sometimes, profound nuggets come at unexpected times.

I don't know about you, but I have a whole collection of unfinished projects. Some of them have been in use for years, but there is always some little thing that I had planned to finish it that remains undone.

For the last few weeks, I've been repairing the damage on the motorcycle fairing which involves a lot of fiberglass, bondo, priming, and sanding. I got tired of filling, sanding, and priming, over and over again until I got to the point where it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough because I was tired of working on prep. It was time to shoot the color.

Then along comes John Chamberlin with the nugget of wisdom. To paraphrase John, 'Although you never really finish a project, some times a project is done because you are out of time, some times because you are out of spit.' With the fairing project, I was out of spit.

I got thinking about this in a larger context and it makes an interesting way to think about other things too. For example, how about my job at Chrysler. Do I have more work to do, am I out of time, or am I out of spit? For me the answer is I've got more work to do and I'll let Chrysler tell me when I'm out of time, but I'm not out of spit. How about relationships, a career, a hobby, etc.?