by Kel Weinhold

TL;DR: Motivation grows in environments where effort leads to closure. When projects have edges, your nervous system can relax into the work because it knows the experience will end. When everything remains open indefinitely, motivation slowly erodes.

One of the things that the people who work with me in person learn pretty quickly is that the list I have them make of everything they are carrying around is not the heaviest part. The burden is actually the weight that comes from carrying it.

It is why I lean so heavily on a backpack metaphor. The shit you are carrying that you don’t even remember is there!

Unfinished work does not just sit peacefully in a its digital cubbyhole. It follows you around. It creeps over your shoulder when you are making dinner. It comes roaring into view when you open your freaking email. It shows up when someone, thinking they are being supportive, asks what you are working on.

The previous WIP posts in this series should have made it clear that every unfinished project carries an emotional charge, whether it is obligation, guilt, shame or…?

I have noticed that the academics I work with tend to compartmentalize their projects. Filing them in a way that makes it seem as if there in only one. And to be fair, one project is manageable. The imaginary 10 simultaneous responsibilities are uncomfortable but doable. The more accurate 50 simultaneous demands shape how you experience your entire life.

We underestimate the cost of both our denial about how many things are in our backpack and the emotional weight we carry about each of them.

So while we are over here clocking the hours we spend actively writing, teaching and responding to FREAKING emails, the unacknowledged/unfinished work is occupying mental space and sucking energy even when you are not working on it.

Last week I talked about identifying feedback loops that you had no control over and changing them to ones you can. The other thing about open loops is that they hold attention. Your brain tracks unfinished commitments whether you want it to or not. It keeps a unacknowledged ledger in the background. The more open loops you have, the more attention is tied up maintaining that ledger.

That is why the WIP list feels overwhelming even before you start doing anything on it. The list is a map of all the places your attention is already partially allocated. AND (this is an important addition) every item also represents a tiny check in with yourself. “I should get back to that.” “I really need to finish this.” “I cannot believe that is still sitting there.”

Over time those “check ins” (read badgering) accumulate into a low grade sense of failure. Not because you are actually failing, but because your attention is constantly brushing up against things that are incomplete.

This is one reason shame thrives around work in progress. The longer something sits unfinished, the more it starts to feel like evidence of a personal flaw rather than a simple mismatch between expectations and capacity.

And for the gzillionth time: The systems many of us work in make this worse.

Academic culture rewards accumulation. From the celebration of new ideas to the intense focus on new collaborations, new projects are constantly introduced. That in and of itself is very cool EXCEPT fewer and fewer structures exist to help scholars close loops or release work that no longer makes sense.

As you are all too aware, that culture creates a professional environment where carrying unfinished work becomes normal and walking around with a hundred open tabs in our minds is just a Tuesday.

But, consider this: There is a difference between normal and sustainable. And carrying unfinished work without a plan for closing the loop is absolutely unsustainable.

Need proof? Consider how your unfinished workload is showing up in ways you may not be noticing, or more importantly blaming on your own lack of motivation: You feel tired before you begin. You avoid looking at certain folders or email threads because they remind you of commitments you have not resolved. You hesitate to start because you already feel behind.

And while the behavioral impact is exhausting, I am more concerned, as a coach, with how the weight changes how you see yourself.

Instead of noticing everything you are actually doing, you see the backlog. You measure your effort against an imaginary version of completion that was never realistic to begin with.

This series exists because I think reducing that weight changes your relationship to work.

When you close a loop, a small bit of background noise is eliminated, but there is also a deeper shift that happens: You begin to rebuild trust with yourself.

When you define what completion looks like and then reach it, even in small ways, you begin to believe your own plans again. Your work stops feeling like an endless accumulation of obligations and starts feeling like a series of choices you can actually complete. This is one of the core goals of my Unstuck course. Rebuilding your integrity with yourself.

Look at your WIP list again. Not with judgment, but with curiosity. Notice which items feel heavy. Notice which ones you avoid even thinking about. Notice where your attention catches and tightens. Do you know what completion looks like for those?

Let me be clear: Closing a loop does not always mean finishing the project. Sometimes it means acknowledging that the project belonged to an earlier version of you and letting it go. What matters is that the loop is closed rather than carried indefinitely.

The goal of the WIP series is not perfect completion. The goal is reducing the invisible weight that unfinished work places on your life.