The Doctrine of Completed Work

We have seen sometime, somewhere, a title⎯”The doctrine of completed work.” There is a limit to what we can pursue effectively at any one time; and one way to keep from ineffective fretting is to finish, to complete what should be done. Having too many unfinished tasks before us is confusing. In the pressure and complexity that is all around us, those responsible for moving work forward must delegate duties to others. But there comes a time when someone must follow to the finish. Someone must take responsibility for final decisions. We may give a child a small task to do, and in the learning process he comes back again and again for an opinion on each phase of his performance: Is this all right? What do I do now? And he might reach the point where he says: “Now you finish it for me.” In childhood, and in the learning process, this we understand. But it is priceless to fin a person who will take responsibility, who will follow through to the final detail⎯to know when someone has accepted an assignment that it will be effectively conscientiously completed. But when half-finished assignments keep coming back⎯to check on, to verify, to edit, to interrupt thought, and to take repeated attention⎯obviously someone has failed to follow the doctrine of completed work. Every needless re-attention to problems, reshuffling of papers, redoing of projects is wasteful and worrisome. The doctrine of completed