In Episode 25, the crew discusses the complexities of knowing when a creative piece is finished. Each member shares insights on completion, managing perfectionism, and finding satisfaction in their work, highlighting the diverse approaches artists take in their creative journeys. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on this intriguing topic!

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative Work Hour podcast. My name is Greg and in the room today we have Alessandra, myself, we have Dr Tamika, we have Nate, we have Hillary, we have Kara, we have Shadows Pub, We have Artemis Ela and Bobby is out driving on the road. This month is national podcast post month. This is our entry for that. I'll ask a question to get the conversation started and we'll see where we go. 

So the first question is, how do you determine when a creative piece is finished or complete?

Alessandra?

Well, thank you, Greg. That is a really, really good question. And as a recovering perfectionist, This much I have learned through all different kinds of media, be it visual arts or performing arts or stuff I'm writing or what have you, is that nothing's ever finished. It's just abandoned. And everything is a work in progress. So once I started to think about that, it really freed me up as an artist and as a creative coach that it's not a presentation, it's something you're sharing. And oh, it's not a performance. It's the work in progress. And once I did that, I felt like I had elbow room again. And then it's not so serious and so binary and successful or fake. No, no, it's the murky middle.

Right, Nate, you have your hand raised .

I mean, you want to, I mean, if you want a fun little exercise, take that perspective of art never being completed into an art museum and look at some painting from hundreds of years ago, thinking that even now it's still not finished, that it's still a work in progress because we, the audience is changing and art is the meaning that you make of it. 

I think an actual answer to your question is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but from college the magic number was 17. If you're writing a paper and you do 17 drafts, that's how you know it's
done. 18, 19, 20, higher than 20, you know, you might be overcooking the egg a little bit, and if you are only at 15 you probably need a couple more. 

Obviously it's tongue and cheek but it as good as any other rubric is somewhat arbitrary. I think you know that if I really think about it, my actual answer would be any work, any piece of art is a series of thresholds. You get a threshold when you do an initial draft and through every editing, every time you do editing, every time you add something, every time you change something is another threshold. And for me, I'll know that it's almost done when The exhale that I get from hitting the threshold is larger and more satisfying and more comprehensive than I expected. 

If you get over a threshold and it really sort of makes you step back and say, aha, those are the thresholds to consider as, is this doing what it needs to do as a piece of art, is this done? 

So that's what I think of is how many thresholds have I been through and how many more do I need to get that feeling?

Thank you, Nate. Kara, you have your hand raised.

I want to build on that. I agree completely with Alessandra that it's never done. But I think we give ourselves, or at least I give myself deadlines. Or deadlines are imposed on me. And that gives you a guide to work against because I think the challenge here, and I've been rereading or contemplating Oliver Berkman's 4, 000 weeks time management from a mere mortal's book. 

Part of the challenge of this is if you don't, if you don't identify it as important, you're never gonna get to it. And So I keep trying to think about how to make this important enough that I actually spend time on this and not on the email inbox and the never ending list of tasks and all those things. If this creative work is really important to me, I wanna make sure I make time for it. And sometimes for me that involves a deadline.

Right, thank you. 

Ela.

I just, I wanted to say, I love the idea of identifying your priorities in that way. It's really awesome. I think for me, actually having things that are hard to have an idea of if it's finished or not sometimes leads me towards things that have specific end goals. Like if I crochet a little frog when the pattern is done, it's done. And there's a little bit of satisfaction in intermixing things that are really obviously complete at some point versus for me painting or writing, I always want to edit it more. So for me finding that balance of different types of projects, some that are a lot more concrete and some that are a lot more vague, makes it less overwhelming to have so many projects where I constantly feel the need to touch them up and adjust them.

Right. Thank you. Dr. Tamika, how about you? How do you know when a piece is finished?

You know I share the same sentiment as Alessandra. The perfectionist piece I think is just embedded, but 2 things. 1, it's a feeling that I feel when I know something is complete, no matter how short or how long I've worked on it. So that's the first piece. And also, if it doesn't make me emotional, it's probably not finished. So those are the 2 pieces that I look for when I feel that something is near completion or it's ready to be presented to the world.

Thank you. Bobby?

I absolutely feel the way most others have expressed, but the other side that helped me was remembering that not every seed is meant to grow. Seed is meant to grow.

If I feel like I'm forcing it, then let's just step away. And maybe that isn't ready yet or was never meant to be.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Hillary, how about you? 

How do you know when a piece is complete or finished?

Well, I definitely think that answer varies with the context of what's being created. So if you're getting into something like Ela was saying, you know, a crocheted kit, there is a completion that's defined. And then, but then you've got something, say you're doing your own painting. Now it's up to you to define where the end is. And for me, when I do more of like abstract projects, If I were to remember to properly document this, I do a review process beforehand, and I would give the project a name. I define what done looks like.

And this is kind of, and I can do this in my personal life, but it's, you know, like a work concept. When are you done? If you're going to assign something, you know, to yourself, to team members, what does done look like? And getting that end goal to be a clear vision for your team is part of that process. So yeah, it's context driven for me.

I do things, you know, crafting around the house and plantings and landscapes and just stuff like that and constantly redoing it. You don't want to know how many times I've redone my little fairy gardens recently now that I've got live moss and I'm figuring out how to use it. And so they keep getting redone, but the moss keeps dying. So they have to be redone. Oh, I'll get it to work eventually.

Right. Shadows, how about yourself? How would you know when a piece is finished?

So I usually start off with the big picture items, and then I go to the last picture items, and then I get down to the little picture items. And when I get down to the little picture items, then I look at each 1 of them and go, is this going to move the needle? Is this going to actually matter? When I reach a point where it doesn't actually matter, It's just a detail that matters to me. Then I throw it into AI and say, okay, give me your feedback. And unless it identifies a hole I didn't notice, it's done.

So You lean on AI to tell you it's done. I like that.

I like that a lot. The final.

The final, final. Final answer, final answer. Artemis, how about you? How do you know when a creative piece is complete or finished?

I don't. It's somewhere in between when my heart sings and my brain kicks in and says, well, you know you could do this. It's somewhere in between. Unless it's needlework and it's never truly done because I'm always improving it. So I guess that's never really done till I've wrapped it and it's walking out of the house with its recipient.

I have a question for Artemis. Like, so your hot topic is fiber arts. Like what keeps you, oh, God help me if I ever get into this, what keeps you from taking that last thread and pulling it and undoing it?

Absolutely nothing. And I've done it many times. I had my pit case in point, my husband has a size 15 foot. So I made him socks. And I was almost done with a pair of socks recently and I found something that needed to be fixed way back in the soul and I ripped that baby out. He would have been able to wear it but it wasn't right. And I ripped that sucker out. Nothing. I pull things out. I had 1 ball of wool. It was my very first ball of merino really fine quality wool and its lace weight. And I have made 4 or 5 different projects with that and then pulled it all apart because it wasn't right.

Well, it sounds like your projects are a bit like how my parents raised me. They both would say, I brought you into this world by God, I'll take you out. Exactly.

So they kept unraveling you, your Alessandra?

Yeah, which explains a lot, doesn't it?

No, the best one is I'll kill you and make another 1 that looks just like you. Oh, that's scary.

That does explain a few things, Hillary. Thank you for that. You never know how we're gonna get to know each other better. It's moments like these. What? How would you answer that, Greg?

Oh my gosh, I'm not sure. I was actually listening when Artemis was talking about knitting and 1 of the things I want to try is knitting. I did it years and years ago as a child, but I do have some knitting needles. I need to get some yarn and Artemis has kindly offered to help me learn how to cast on because I can't do the casting on and casting off. 

Right now I could probably net a lovely polar neck pair of socks, but that would be about the limit to what I could do. How would I know when something is finished? I think that sometimes we have to say enough is enough, minimum viable product comes to line. I'm a perfectionist as well. And if I'm not careful, I can keep adding to something or changing something until it becomes different than what it started out as and then it's changed and then I'm not happy this is not what I wanted to write because I changed it so much. 

So at some point maybe if you have to limit with time if a time constraint you need to impose on yourself if it gets to Tuesday at 11 o'clock it's going to be done, if it's something different but at some point we have to have that finality because the curse of the artist, right, in that to the artist the piece may not be finished, there may be another brushstroke that other people wouldn't recognize. And we can be, if we're not careful, we can, you know, never finish something and then nothing would be produced. So it's a very difficult 1. 

But on that note, I will say that it has happened again. You've wasted a perfectly few good minutes listening to the Creative Work Hour podcast, when you could have been doing something else. 

How would you determine when you finished a piece? Let us know. We'd be curious to learn what your thoughts are on that. 

Come back again tomorrow and we will be here.