The Checkbox Doesn't Tell the Whole Story

There is something incredibly satisfying about checking something off a list. You finish the task, draw a line through it, and move on to whatever comes next. There is a little sense of accomplishment built right into that checkmark. The problem is that the opposite can happen when something stays on the list for too long. After days or weeks of seeing the same unchecked box, it can start to feel less like a task in progress and more like evidence that you aren't getting enough done.

I ran into that this month while creating a 2027 calendar for KCK. When I started, I thought it would be a relatively quick project. I had the concept, I knew what I wanted it to feel like, and I had a pretty clear picture of what I wanted to create. I figured I would design it, finish it, and move on to the next thing.

Apparently, I severely underestimated how much work goes into making a calendar.

There were twelve months that each needed their own design. I had to choose colors, create quotes, write weekly prompts, make sure every date was correct, adjust layouts, create a front cover and a back cover, and then go back through everything to make revisions. Some of those revisions were significant. Others were the kind of tiny changes that somehow consume an hour even though you were positive they would take five minutes.

What I thought would be a relatively quick project ended up taking almost three weeks. During most of that time, my list didn't reflect any of the work I was doing. It just kept saying the same thing: Finish the calendar.

That's the problem with a checkbox. It only knows whether something is finished.

It doesn't know that I completed another month yesterday or solved a design problem today. It doesn't know that I spent an hour figuring out how to do something that I'll probably be able to do in fifteen minutes next time. It doesn't know how many versions I changed, how many decisions I made, or how many little pieces had to come together before the project could actually be called finished.

According to the checkbox, there wasn't much difference between the first day I worked on the calendar and the day before I finished it. Both days looked exactly the same: not done. But obviously, they weren't the same.

I think that's where lists can mess with our perception of progress. We tend to give the finished product all the credit because that's the moment we can finally point to something tangible and say, "I did it." Everything that happened before that gets lumped together as unfinished, even though the unfinished part is where almost all of the actual work happened.

I've caught myself doing this with more than just the calendar. I'll look at something that has been sitting on my list longer than I expected and immediately think I should have finished it by now. Then comes the frustration. This shouldn't be taking this long. I thought I would be further along. Why am I still working on this?

But those thoughts assume my original timeline was correct. Sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes I had no idea how much work something would require because I had never done it before. Sometimes I discovered problems I couldn't have anticipated until I was already in the middle of the project. Sometimes life continued happening while I was trying to finish it. The amount of time I imagined something would take wasn't a promise, and taking longer than I expected didn't suddenly make all the work I had already done disappear.

The calendar took almost three weeks. That doesn't mean I spent almost three weeks failing to finish a calendar. It means I spent almost three weeks making one. There is a difference.

Progress doesn't suddenly become real on the day something is completed. It was happening when I finished one month. It was happening when I changed something that wasn't working. It was happening when I scrapped an idea and started over. It was happening when I learned something new, made another decision, or sat down and worked on it for twenty minutes when I would have rather done something else.

None of those things gave me the satisfaction of checking the box, but every one of them moved me closer to being able to.

Maybe that's worth remembering when something has been sitting on your own list longer than you thought it would. Before deciding you aren't getting anywhere, look at what has actually happened between the day you wrote the task down and today. Maybe you've completed three of the five pieces it requires. Maybe you've learned something you didn't know when you started. Maybe you've had to change direction. Maybe you're moving more slowly than you hoped, but you're still moving.

An unchecked box can tell you that you aren't finished yet. That's all it can tell you. It can't tell you how hard you've worked, how much you've learned, how many pieces you've completed, or how much closer you are than you were when you started.

So yes, finishing matters. I still like checking things off my list, and I don't think that's going to change. But I'm trying to get better at recognizing the work that happens before I get to make that checkmark. We don't have to finish something today for today's effort to matter.

Small steps are still progress. Eventually, enough of them get you to the checkbox.