Some things are never done

Don’t you just love crossing things off your to-do list? Checking a box? Marking something “done”?

That sense of completion is so satisfying.

So what about the things in life that are never done?

There’s no end to tending to your relationships, taking care of your health, managing your finances, raising your children, exploring your creativity, or understanding yourself.

These aspects of life are constant works in progress. They are projects that are never done.

You get to choose whether that’s depressing or freeing. You also get to choose what parts of your life get categorized this way.

I recently discovered this about my house.

Without realizing it, I had mentally categorized my house as something that would at some point be done. There’d be no more problems to solve, improvements to make, or projects to handle. I could put all that homeowner stuff behind me and just live my life!

Turns out, no.

Owning a house—at least one built in the 1950s, in the country, in a place with four seasons—is a never-ending project. While I’m guessing it will eventually take up less space in my consciousness, the box will never be checked.

Coming into this awareness, I felt a wave of overwhelm followed by enormous relief.

I could slow down. I could let things be imperfect. I could wait and see if I still feel like making that change next weekend, or next year.

When you recognize something as having no end point, you can stop rushing because there’s nowhere to get. It becomes less of a race to the finish and more of a dance with what’s here.

In a culture that glorifies productivity and achievement, it can be challenging to relate to something as never ending. We want to be able to define success, follow a step-by-step framework, and arrive at predetermined outcome.

We want to predict the future.

But when you think about it, where’s the fun in that?

In my experience, most projects that lend themselves to frameworks, with clear beginning and end points, are kind of a drag. Or at best, forgettable.

On the other hand, things in the never-ending category—relationships, health, money, parenting, creativity, personal growth—are the parts of life that have lasting impact. They inspire and challenge you to look inward, keep learning, and run experiments.

The things that are never done are the things that allow you to expand into new versions of yourself.

Is there something in your life that feels like a perpetual to-do? Something you feel frustrated by its constant presence?

What if you tried relating to it differently? Instead of a task that needs to be completed, maybe it’s just part of your life.

If “done” was off the table, what opens up?