Somewhere in my Notion workspace is a company that doesn’t exist. Several, actually. There are books, essays, research frameworks, courses, assessments, publishing concepts, and business models in various stages of becoming something. Some are fairly developed. Others are a promising title followed by an enthusiastic paragraph, which apparently qualifies as a project around here. A few have already spawned three additional projects before the original has had the courtesy to become a finished document.
It’s an impressive operation, considering the entire staff consists of me. I’m the founder, researcher, writer, strategist, project manager, editor, administrative assistant, technical support department, and, regrettably, the person responsible for remembering whether there are clean towels. We are experiencing some staffing challenges.
For a while, I wondered whether the ideas themselves were the problem. Perhaps I was chasing novelty or avoiding commitment. Starting something is exciting; finishing it often involves tasks with roughly the appeal of cleaning behind the refrigerator. I certainly struggle with initiating and finishing things, and I wouldn’t pretend that every unfinished project is simply waiting for a larger budget.
But I know how much I enjoy completion. Finally getting through a mountain of laundry can give me a ridiculous sense of accomplishment. Staying caught up on the dishes makes me feel as though I’ve briefly regained control of civilization. Finishing a book chapter or launching a website is deeply satisfying. I want to get there. I’m just increasingly aware of how many jobs stand between the idea and the finish line, and how often I’ve assigned all of them to someone who was already busy.
My ideas rarely arrive alone. I’ll start with a question about why capable people struggle to ask for help, or why we attach so much worth to productivity, and find myself following connections into psychology, biology, social expectations, organizational design, and whatever other subject has wandered into the conversation uninvited. An essay begins to take shape. While working on it, I notice a larger question that might deserve a framework. The framework suggests a book, the book suggests a course, and somewhere in there I’ve identified a possible assessment and a business model.
The troublesome part is that these connections often make sense. I can explain what each piece might do and how it could support the others. The next project may be a legitimate extension of the first, which makes it considerably harder to dismiss than an obvious distraction. It belongs in the picture. Whether it belongs on my calendar is another matter, but my brain tends to settle the first question and consider the meeting adjourned.
I love this part of the work. Give me a messy operation, an underdeveloped concept, or a collection of information that hasn’t quite come together, and I want to get inside it. I want to understand what’s missing and why something that looks sensible on paper keeps failing in practice. I enjoy helping the work take shape, making decisions, testing alternatives, and finding that one connection that changes how I understand the whole thing.
Eventually, though, someone has to upload the images.
Someone has to fix the formatting, check the buttons, organize the files, reconcile the versions, and troubleshoot whatever the software was doing perfectly well yesterday. These jobs can consume an afternoon without producing anything I would think to mention if someone asked what I’d worked on. They’re necessary, and I don’t object to doing them. I object, occasionally and with feeling, to the fact that doing them means everything else has to wait.
I’d still be involved if I had a competent team. I would write, research, make decisions, review the work, and ask an inconvenient number of questions. I’d also be able to hand something over and trust that it would keep moving while I worked on something else. At present, handing something over generally means leaving a note for a future version of myself who I seem to believe will have fewer responsibilities.
She has yet to report for work.
There’s an uncomfortable judgment attached to unfinished projects, especially when a person has a lot of them. We describe that person as scattered, impulsive, a dreamer who needs to become a doer. Sometimes the criticism is fair. Planning can become a place to hide, and an exciting new project can offer a convenient escape from a difficult old one. I have to be willing to ask whether I’m doing that.
I also want a more accurate accounting of the work. An independent publishing project might involve editing, design, website maintenance, distribution, payment processing, and customer support. In a staffed organization, we recognize those as jobs. When one person is doing them, they tend to disappear into the word follow-through.
The unfinished project becomes evidence that she lacks it, with very little curiosity about what, exactly, she was supposed to follow through on between earning a living and getting everyone fed.
Not every idea of mine deserves a team. Some would probably become much less impressive after a thorough encounter with reality. But I can see enough possibility in them that setting them aside doesn’t feel entirely neutral. I can imagine the reader who might find something useful in an essay, or the problem a tool might help someone understand. I know those outcomes aren’t guaranteed. Still, the possibility stays with me, and a folder full of possibilities can start to feel like a folder full of obligations.
An ordinary Tuesday is a poor setting in which to carry all of that. Tuesday already has work, children, dishes, and something unexpected that apparently couldn’t have happened on any other day.
I’ve had to look more closely at how I make the workload larger. My instinct is to develop an idea thoroughly, and I can usually see another layer worth exploring. Once I’ve imagined the larger version, the smaller one starts looking incomplete.
I’ve been treating the largest possible expression of an idea as the minimum acceptable one. No wonder so little feels finished.
An essay can do a real piece of work. It can examine a question carefully enough that someone else has something to respond to. A reader might recognize an experience, disagree with the reasoning, or point out something I’ve missed. That exchange could help me decide whether there’s more to pursue. I don’t have to anticipate every possible use of the idea and build the supporting infrastructure before anyone gets to read it.
This is part of why I’m building Ultraviolet Mind, although I appreciate the questionable logic of responding to too many projects by starting a publication. I know who will be uploading the images.
What I want is somewhere the thinking can reach a reader while it’s still an essay. I want room to follow a question, develop an argument, and publish something without automatically committing myself to a book, a course, and an accompanying downloadable workbook. Some of the work may grow into those things. I’m still interested in the books and the research, and I’d love to have the support to pursue the larger possibilities. But I’d also like to find out what happens when people can encounter the work before I’ve built everything I can imagine around it.
For now, I’m trying to let a finished essay count as finished. This one included, despite its obvious potential to become a sixteen-module course on overcomplicating your own workload.
There would be a workbook. I’d have to format it.