Hmmm. I think my struggle is different: I tend to finish too early. For me the anxiety of not being done--which is the anxiety that gets me to work in the first place--is so strong that I have a tendency to declare my finishing before I've actually finished.

Sometimes this is fairly comical--as anyone who I've ever asked to read something knows, since I end up sending out versions far too early, then revising and sending out new versions the next day or the next afternoon.

Sometimes it's a little tragic--as when I think about my first book, which is not nearly as good as it could have been, I imagine, had I been patient enough to wait for a year for me to get smarter, or for it to ripen and mature.

As with all these things, I think, it's the very thing you're afraid of that causes you to behave in ways that make it come true. In my case, I'm afraid my work isn't good, and this anxiety prompts me to end early, so that I can be done with anxiety. But of course it keeps the work from being as good as it could be, with the obvious results.

In the case of the procrastinating finisher (as opposed to the procrastinating starter, a completely different animal), I think the fear is — I'm guessing, since it's not me — of being judged, of being done with the project in such a way as to declare, see, here, this is my thing, evaluate it how you will... without the screen of being able to take it back and declare that it was just a draft. At least that's what I imagine. Procrastinating finishers are, I think, tinkerers by inclination.

What happens, then, is that the thing the procrastinating finisher is afraid of — judgment — ends up producing a judgment on the procrastinating finisher: that s/he is lazy, incapable of following through, slow, and so on.

I don't know if this rings true for you — the metaphysical melancholia you point at certainly seems preferable to the ourobouros of failure that I've described. I guess for me seeing how my fear produces the very thing I'm afraid of is, however, helpful, and so I tend to imagine it as the solution to every problem I encounter. To a guy with a hammer...

This difficulty reminds me of Samuel Johnson's last essay in the Idler of April 5, 1760. It has always spoken to me of what we feel as we come to the end of something. I've copied the text below (courtesy of the Gutenberg Project).

Much of the pain and pleasure of mankind arises from the conjectures
which every one makes of the thoughts of others; we all enjoy praise
which we do not hear, and resent contempt which we do not see. The Idler
may, therefore, be forgiven, if he suffers his imagination to represent
to him what his readers will say or think when they are informed that
they have now his last paper in their hands.

Value is more frequently raised by scarcity than by use. That which lay
neglected when it was common, rises in estimation as its quantity
becomes less. We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is
discovered that we can have no more.

This essay will, perhaps, be read with care even by those who have not
yet attended to any other; and he that finds this late attention
recompensed, will not forbear to wish that he had bestowed it sooner.

Though the Idler and his readers have contracted no close friendship,
they are, perhaps, both unwilling to part. There are few things not
purely evil, of which we can say, without some emotion of uneasiness,
_this is the last_. Those who never could agree together, shed tears
when mutual discontent has determined them to final separation; of a
place which has been frequently visited, though without pleasure, the
last look is taken with heaviness of heart; and the Idler, with all his
chilness of tranquillity, is not wholly unaffected by the thought that
his last essay is now before him.

The secret horrour of the last is inseparable from a thinking being,
whose life is limited, and to whom death is dreadful. We always make a
secret comparison between a part and the whole; the termination of any
period of life reminds us that life itself has likewise its termination;
when we have done any thing for the last time, we involuntarily reflect
that a part of the days allotted us is past, and that as more is past
there is less remaining.

It is very happily and kindly provided, that in every life there are
certain pauses and interruptions, which force consideration upon the
careless, and seriousness upon the light; points of time where one
course of action ends, and another begins; and by vicissitudes of
fortune or alteration of employment, by change of place or loss of
friendship, we are forced to say of something, _this is the last_.

An even and unvaried tenour of life always hides from our apprehension
the approach of its end. Succession is not perceived but by variation;
he that lives to-day as he lived yesterday, and expects that, as the
present day is, such will be the morrow, easily conceives time as
running in a circle and returning to itself. The uncertainty of our
duration is impressed commonly by dissimilitude of condition; it is only
by finding life changeable that we are reminded of its shortness.

This conviction, however forcible at every new impression, is every
moment fading from the mind; and partly by the inevitable incursion of
new images, and partly by voluntary exclusion of unwelcome thoughts, we
are again exposed to the universal fallacy; and we must do another thing
for the last time, before we consider that the time is nigh when we
shall do no more.

As the last Idler is published in that solemn week which the Christian
world has always set apart for the examination of the conscience, the
review of life, the extinction of earthly desires, and the renovation of
holy purposes; I hope that my readers are already disposed to view every
incident with seriousness, and improve it by meditation; and that, when
they see this series of trifles brought to a conclusion, they will
consider that, by out-living the Idler, they have passed weeks, months
and years, which are now no longer in their power; that an end must in
time be put to every thing great as to every thing little; that to life
must come its last hour, and to this system of being its last day, the
hour at which probation ceases, and repentance will be vain; the day in
which every work of the hand, and imagination of the heart shall be
brought to judgment, and an everlasting futurity shall be determined by
the past.

Great comments. It's hard to follow up on Dr. J, so I'll just repond to E Hayot's comment, at least for the moment.

The thing that looks like a nail to you is at least in part. I wouldn't dare claim to be entirely above the sort of finishing problems that seem definitive, it sometimes seems, of graduate student life --and indeed, often of smart students in general. I tell my thesis students at our first meeting this old joke: There are two kinds of dissertations: brilliant and finished.

We must have all known (and some of us have been) that really smart student who always had a lot of incompletes . . . it seems that it is precisely the smart ones who have this problem.

My situation is somewhat different, though. I really do get things done on time. I only took a few incompletes back in grad school and I finished all those the next semester. I get articles in on time, etc. The problem with the book project is that there is no “on time.” So, there's that.

More importantly, though, I really do think that for me it involves something of the existential worrying I talk about at the end, something that doesn't involve imagining the reproaches (or praise) of others as it does looking at the thing and just feeling that it's not right, not what it is supposed to be. That is, I feel less like an anxious student and more like an artist in process. I realize this might sound unspeakable pretentious! I'm not saying my scholarship is art, I'm just saying I relate to the process in ways that are very much like what I felt when I once used to paint, write poetry, etc. When you become absorbed in making something, the issue isn't whether other people are going to like it but whether you are doing justice to the thing.

Of course, this doesn't mean you don't ever stop being absorbed and then worry about your grade, whether people will laugh at your painting, etc., --just to say that there is something else as well.

And that, I think. was the muffled point of the post: that academic work needn't be thought just in the sociological terms of success, failure, and anxiety, but can also be thought in terms of creation, dedication, and some of the loftier vocabulary we usually reserve for Art.

And thanks again for the great quote from Samuel Johnson!

I have to agree with C Bush. Someone once told me (actually, a professor from whom I was asking one of my many graduate school incompletes) that everyone finishes at the last minute, but for some people the last minute is a month before a deadline and for others the last minute is at some point after the deadline when anxiety or whatever tells you “now its time.” For some projects, like books, there is no last minute or the last minute comes because of tenure or some other professional pressure. I too am finishing up a project that could have been done years ago (I don't think it will be done by C Bush's next post though--maybe 3 posts from now). Anxiety has contributed to the delay and the need to abate my anxiety is contributing to its completion....oh fuck it, artist or no I better go write my book and not this shit.