The Discipline of Finishing
Beginning is a feeling. Finishing is a character trait, and it can be built in a workshop.
Essay · Peter Amiot · Steward of Shore House · November 2021
In the boat shop we do not permit a second project until the first is done[1]. This rule is unpopular for approximately one year, after which it is defended fiercely by the people who most resented it.
The reason is not moral. An unfinished thing occupies attention at a low, constant rate — a small tax levied every time you walk past it. Six unfinished things and a person is paying most of their attention to work they are not doing.
Finishing is also where the learning is. Anyone can enjoy the first eighty per cent of a hull. The last twenty is fairing, sanding, and the acceptance that the fault you introduced in March is now permanent and yours.
We do not ask members to do impressive things. We ask them to complete unimpressive ones, in order, in public.
A person who has finished twenty small things has a different relationship to their own promises than a person who has begun two hundred. This is, as far as I can tell, most of what we mean by trustworthiness.
Sources
Each numbered reference above is traceable to a document held in the Common Record or to a page preserved from an earlier system. Where a source is held in part, that is stated.
- [1]
PRO/standing
Standing procedures of the houses
Procedure · As presently in force · Stewardship
The Shore House workshop rule as it stands in the standing procedures.
Standing: HeldReturn to the passage
Journal of the Continuance Institute · revision 31.8 · this document has been reconciled with the Common Record