I have completionist tendencies. Rather than stop when the enjoyment or meaning stops, I will carry on with a book or a video game or a TV series, because I feel compelled to finish it. I’m learning, however, that life is too short to be focusing on things that aren’t bringing me enjoyment. And the completionist tendency is tied somehow to guilt. I’ve associated not finishing with being lazy or wasteful, especially if I’ve spent money or a considerable amount of time on a thing already. I’m learning, though, that sometimes it’s actually wise to know when to stop doing something, and I have been able to more frequently say “I’m done” in the middle of things.
This completionist tendency has translated into my research as well. For my writing projects, I will often build a long list of media to research, and internally declare that I will consume each piece of media in its entirety. More often than not, I don’t get through all the media. Or even worse, I get stuck. I might get to the relevant stuff in a research book, and then realize I still have 100 pages left. Cue the guilt. Even though I can make a good guess that the remainder of the book will not be relevant to my project, I still feel bad that I’m not finishing it. Or I might ask for recommendations from others on what I could read, and then feel overwhelmed at the volume of texts and films I “need” to go through.
But, as I said, I’ve been learning. For Untitled, I did do a crowdsourced recommendation on research books, but then sifted through each one to determine whether it was actually appropriate for my purposes. And yesterday, I started reading a book, then got to a section that I realized was not relevant to my project and decided I would skip it. There is still a lingering guilt in the back of my mind. But I believe that’s the rational brain acting up in the face of letting intuition take the lead. Besides, the rational brain should also realize that there’s no way, no time, for me to go through every possible research material in its entirety. It should be happy that I’m trying to figure out a smarter way to research.
