“Work in Progress” By Poornima Vijayashanker
I took the picture above while I was touring the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona last month. The famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi took over the project in 1883, and transformed it into his own architectural and engineering style.
Gaudi continued to work on the church until his death, but to this day the church is incomplete. Many factors have contributed to the delay of its completion such as the Spanish Civil War in the 1950s and finding sources of funding.
Despite the delay, the church is an architectural and engineering marvel. Every piece of it has an intricate detail, and every detail fits into a bigger puzzle.
It got me thinking about how many of us worry about meeting deadlines, shipping products, and completing projects. We think that it marks the end. We’re looking for an ending, because we’re tired of working on the same thing day after day. We are eager to just move on to something else, only to chase yet another ending.
But what would happen if we didn’t move on?
If instead the first thing we released, launched, or shipped marked a beginning.
And sharing it with the world, gave people an opportunity to experience it, and provide us with feedback.
Then we took their feedback and used it as an opportunity to learn.
Of course there might come a point in time when our creative juices start to dry up. When that happens we could take a step back, and look at the thing we’re working on from a new angle.
Or we could take a real break, and learn a new skill that could be applied to refining our thing.
Or if we’re really get stuck, we could recruit other people to work on our thing with us.
Or we could incorporate learnings from building and refining our thing into a new thing.
There are an endless number of approaches to keeping our thing alive, beyond our lifetimes just like Gaudi has done with the Sagrada Familia church.
A work in progress can be a wonderful thing on its own.
What’s your work in progress, and how do you stay inspired?
Let me know in the comments below!
