I opened my planner this morning to the correct date.
This may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but after weeks of travel, home repairs, disrupted routines, and generally being out of my normal groove, I considered it progress. My planner has been sorely neglected.
There it was, open on my desk to the right day. Sunsama, my digital planner, also helpfully reminded me of the unfinished tasks I had accumulated. Apparently, it had been keeping track even when I wasn’t.
Maybe I was finally getting back into the groove.
Seeing September on my planner reminded me: I LOVE FALL! I always get this burst of energy—excitement about cooler nights, hopefully less watering in my garden, and just the feeling of a new season beginning. I was ready for it.
But do you ever have those little thoughts that keep buzzing around in the background? They’re hard to catch. You aren’t necessarily thinking about them, but somehow, they keep finding their way back into your attention.
I had a whole swarm of them.
A carpet remnant. A subscription I could have sworn I had already canceled. An Apple Watch case that arrived looking nothing like the one I ordered. Emails and follow-ups. None of them was particularly important or even urgent, but none of them was finished either.
On their own, they didn’t deserve much attention.
Together, they were surprisingly noisy.
So, I decided to swat some flies.
Where Did All These Flies Come From?
As I worked through them, I began to see a pattern.
Most of these flies had come from something bigger I thought I’d already finished.
We’ve been doing repairs around our house. Water damage meant repairing the utility room floor, which eventually led to tearing out the old kitchen carpet and dealing with the linoleum underneath. We bought a carpet remnant for a hallway where we couldn’t repair the linoleum.
Project finished? Almost.
Enough carpet was left to make two rugs, and I didn’t want a perfectly good remnant dry-rotting in the shed.
Simple enough.
Except getting those two rugs made turned into a quote, a follow-up on the quote, accepting the quote, and then clicking a link to accept the quote I’d already accepted. Right now, I’m still waiting for instructions so I can actually pay for them.
One home repair project nearly finished—and still buzzing.
The Apple Watch was another example. I recently bought a new one, and after seeing the beating my old Series 6 took, I wanted a good protective case. I found a beautiful zinc-alloy case and ordered it.
What arrived was not the case I ordered.
Suddenly, buying a watch case became emails, photographs, explanations, a proposed replacement, and another open loop while I wait for the seller to fix the mistake.
Neither situation is a crisis. They’re barely worthy of complaint.
But they aren’t done.
Why Unfinished Tasks Feel So Noisy
That’s when I realized what was bothering me.
For me, there is a gap between almost done and done. When enough of those gaps accumulate, I start to feel friction. I can become almost paralyzed.
It isn’t necessarily the big project occupying my thoughts. I handled the big project. It’s that final 5% still hanging around after I thought I had moved on.
And apparently, my brain keeps excellent records.
There is nothing quite like 2 a.m. for remembering everything you haven’t finished. You wake up, roll over, and suddenly your brain decides this is the perfect time to remind you about the email you haven’t sent, the appointment you still need to schedule, or the follow-up you’re waiting for.
Apparently, the things that barely earned my attention at 2 p.m. can become remarkably important at 2 a.m.
I was going to include “the return sitting by the door” on that list, but mine aren’t actually sitting by the door. I have a designated bag hanging on my office closet door for returns. On errand day, I grab the bag and go.
Some systems are born of experience.
It turns out my 2 a.m. brain may be onto something. Research has found that unfinished tasks can keep following us mentally after we’ve stopped working, making it harder to switch off and contributing to thoughts that keep circling when we’d rather be resting.¹ Other research suggests that making progress on unfinished tasks can help quiet some of that mental noise.²
I was oddly relieved to learn there was research behind this—not because I needed scientific justification for dealing with a carpet remnant, but because sometimes it’s reassuring to discover that the thing your brain does isn’t something only your brain does.
Of course, not everyone experiences unfinished things this way. Some people seem perfectly capable of forgetting about them.
I live with one of those people.
When Waiting Stops Giving Me Breathing Room
There is a little irony in all of this.
In August, I wrote about giving myself permission to let some things wait. I meant every word of it.
Just between you and me, I’m not always particularly good at it.
After a busy summer, I didn’t have the capacity—or the desire—to manufacture urgency simply because the calendar was moving along. I handled what mattered and let some other things sit for a while.
That was the right choice.
But waiting and finishing aren’t the same thing.
At some point, I realized that some of the things I’d allowed to wait were no longer giving me breathing room. They were creating noise.
So, I spent today swatting flies.
I wasn’t tackling a major goal. Chuckle, I wasn’t even creating a strategic plan for the last quarter of the year. I certainly wasn’t trying to squeeze more productivity out of every available hour.
I was closing gaps.
And as the day went on, things got quieter.
Making Room for What Comes Next
Maybe that’s why this felt important as September began.
I adore fall. My goal is not to race through it on my way to Christmas or treat the last four months of the year as one long sprint toward everything I haven’t accomplished yet.
I want to enjoy the living of it. Simple pleasures like noticing the cooler mornings when they arrive. I want to settle back into familiar rhythms after a summer that disrupted them. I want time for meaningful work, people I care about, ordinary afternoons, and whatever this season brings that I can’t possibly plan for.
For me, that sometimes means dealing with the little unfinished things jockeying for my attention. I’ve learned that I don’t need to close every open loop or finish everything immediately. But I do need to notice when the buzzing has become loud enough that I can’t hear what I want to turn toward next.
Sometimes moving forward begins with swatting a few flies.
What unfinished thing keeps buzzing back into your attention?
References
- Weigelt, Oliver, et al. “The Relationship Between Unfinished Tasks and Work-Related Thoughts During Off-Job Time: A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (2026). PubMed record
- Weigelt, Oliver, et al. Research examining unfinished tasks, task progress, and psychological detachment from work. PubMed record
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