Hasta La Ideas

There’s abundant advice, here on Unclutterer and elsewhere, on overcoming procrastination so incomplete work gets finished. But in some circumstances, the best approach might be to forget about completing certain things.

I’m in a book club that’s been meeting for years, and I just finished our latest selection — a book I really enjoyed.

But I haven’t enjoyed all of our choices, and when that happens I just stop reading that month’s book. Fortunately, my book club still welcomes me to attend the meeting, and it’s interesting to hear the different reactions. Even if those who didn’t finish the book were not welcome, I’d still give up on the book. Time is such a precious resource, and I’m not going to spend my limited reading time with a book I’m not enjoying.

If you feel guilty about abandoning a book, it might help to know that some authors quickly give up on books that don’t grab them. Eleanor Brown doesn’t finish about 20 percent of the books she starts. She stops as soon as she’s no longer interested, which could be on page 2 or page 150. John Scalzi writes, “I put down books the instant they bore me.” As Laura Miller notes in a New York Times article, Michael Chabon gives up on books after just a page or two. Myla Goldberg goes a bit further, but still only gives a book 15-20 pages to convince her it’s worth her time.

I make similar choices when it comes to reading news stories. I’ll sometimes begin an article and realize I don’t feel a need to know anything more than what’s in the title, or maybe the first sentence or first paragraph. Or sometimes I begin a long feature article I thought I’d enjoy, but I don’t. In these cases, I stop reading the article and move on.

It’s also fine to give up on a movie, although you’ll want to be considerate of others if you’re watching in a theater rather than at home. (It’s easier to leave if you’re on an aisle than if you’re in the middle of a row.) And you might decide to stop watching a particular TV show or to abandon a weekly show mid-season.

I also see lots of people with partially completed craft projects that got set aside many years ago. When Susan Reimer of The Baltimore Sun asked people about long-unfinished craft projects, she got stories about a dollhouse kit that had been unfinished for 27 years and an unfinished sampler that got moved to eight houses. The same thing can happen with woodworking projects and other such activities.

If the person no longer has any real interest in completing that project, for whatever reason, it makes sense to just let it go. It can be a relief to acknowledge a project is not going to happen and to dispose of the supplies set aside for it by selling, giving away, or repurposing them for more compelling projects.

Post written by Jeri Dansky

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