A big problem with unfinished projects is that they leave you incomplete. When a project is complete, you get a sense of completion in your mind. Otherwise, it becomes a dangling thread of thoughts in the mind. It keeps taking space and mental cycles (even if it is in the subconcious). And that leaves little room for exploring new ideas and executing them. The mental space starts looking cluttered.
At the same time, there is this problem of when to call a project finished (or completed). As such, everything in this world is ever changing and ever evolving. And that means calling a project complete becomes more of a mental thing than a well defined state of the project itself. For example, if I start working on a movie now, I may feel complete by making the movie, or by making sure that it is seen by as many people as possible, or by creating a sequel that’s even better than the first movie etc etc. In fact, in this example, the project goes through multiple well defined stages but there are projects where there are no well defined stages. Things like blog, business don’t have well defined stages. There is nothing discreet in their progress. There are jumps but it is still a continum which goes on and on and on.
When I look back, I feel biking is one project I finished. I wanted to own a bike and travel around since college days. I bought one when I got into a job. I travelled to many places. And then during one trip, I felt complete from inside. I felt that I had done as much biking as I wanted to do. I could have done more; in fact, I did travel to more places after that. But there was no urge to hit the highway on bike anymore. Same thing happened with photography. I wanted to do photography. I bought a camera, shot many pictures and then eventually, I stopped clicking photographs because I started enjoying the moments better without a camera.
So, while it is important to complete projects, completion itself is a state of mind. Which makes it difficult to complete a project with the “intention to complete it”. Because completion is not “about the project”, it’s about how “you relate to the project”.