For me, my day job things are rarely “finished” and “done.”
There are a lot of folks who can go home knowing they filled all the orders, dropped of all the shipments, closed all the tickets, and got things completely done. All the way done — for the day. Tomorrow there will be more, but those things are for tomorrow.
As a writer and a software developer, I often struggle with the tradeoff of “Good Enough.”
Intellectual property — books and software — aren’t ever really “done." There’s always more to revise and expand. But. There’s a publication date and a marketing campaign. So. At some point, I have to stop fussing and call it done. Or “done for now.” Or “good enough.”
The grand list of boat jobs — as a whole — is never done. There’s a long list of things to do and it rarely shrinks.
But.
Each job on the list is finite.
The task may be very large — for example, rebuild the water tanks — but it’s still finite. There’s a definition of done. Once the tanks hold water and the berth is reset for guests, we’re done. Close the job. Move on to the next job.
The done part of this sailing life is highly satisfying.
A few months ago, CA decluttered the lazarette to remove old lines we weren’t using; lines filled with mildew. She also chucked out one of the two tiny danforth anchors for the dinghy.
(We have no idea why there were two. Any why Danforths? Mushrooms make more sense for an inflatable.)
And she got rid of the tiny fender we didn’t know what to do with.
Decluttered. Done. Everything else in the locker has a defined purpose on the boat. And we’d used it over the years, meaning it wasn’t some kind of “maybe we might need that” spare.
We have our checklists of jobs. The cold, snowy days of February are for planning the work, buying parts and tools, and dreaming of sailing.
