Everything (in life) comes down to this: complete and create

The simple work we're really here to do--for better or worse

Complete and create. That’s about it, from my perspective.

From the start, life pulls us in two directions: to make things, and to finish them. As babies, we cry to fill our hunger, and we let go of what we no longer need. We make noise, we make a mess, we complete the cycle. Those early acts of creation and completion are instinctive. Later, they just take on more complex forms.

How different is that, actually, from what we do at age 18 or age 80? Our hunger may show up in myriad forms—food we want or need; something we want or need to produce or create to satisfy some internal drive. We need to launch this software, deal with climate change, get our kids into the right schools, ad infinitum.

And the learning instinct follows right behind it: cleaning the kitchen, closing projects, fixing bugs, decluttering closets, resolving loose ends. The urge to create, the need to complete. Ad infinitum.

There have been many attempted cultural and spiritual descriptions of this dynamic—yin and yang, Creator and Destroyer, etc. But, in my experience it’s all the same. Creation and completion.

So what?

Most of us could improve or at least enhance our alignment with both dynamics. And when we do, we experience a greater comfort, control, relaxation, and feeling of grounded-ness with our situation. In my decades of experience working with many thousands of people, I have never seen an exception.

That’s why I kept sharing the framework that ultimately showed up as Getting Things Done: a way to engage productively and positively with the full spectrum of life’s work.

And that’s why it is eternally “green”—that is, these questions will never lose their relevance and value, whether it’s today or when we fly to Jupiter:

• What do I need to complete, close up, resolve, finalize, and clean up?

• On what things, and how, should I focus my attention?

The best catalysts for these reflections are often built-in milestones: the end of a year, the close of a project, a new season, or simply a quiet moment to look at life from a higher perspective. Sometimes it’s a GTD seminar or a walk around the block. The important thing is to find a way to close open loops, and to choose what deserves our creative attention next.

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin.....
But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten
through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a
debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that
these obstacles were my life. - Alfred Souza

My best to all of you.

David