Cutting the cloth

Mencius came home from his studies one day, early, looking pleased with himself.

His mother was at the loom. She asked how far he'd got in his books. He said something vague about still being at it.

She took a knife and cut the cloth off the loom.

The boy was frightened and asked what she was doing. She said: what you just did to your studies is what I just did to this cloth. A piece of cloth is made from threads, woven into inches, inches into a bolt. If you stop halfway, you have neither cloth nor thread, just a length of work that can't be used and can't be sold.

If you stop halfway in your studies, you'll never be free of poverty and you'll end up in the same place as the cloth.

He went back and finished.

It's a hard-edged story, and it works because she damaged something she'd made herself. She didn't threaten him with what he might lose. She made him watch the cost.

That's the thing half-finished projects never show you. The cloth problem isn't that it's wasted; it's that a half-finished thing is heavier than an unfinished one, because it has a shape now, and the shape keeps asking why you left.

Look at what you're three-quarters of the way through. Not the exciting starts. The long middles. Then ask what the bolt was going to be for.

MOJOWAY asks that question before a client starts another commitment. Choosing to start well is a skill, and so is choosing to stop honestly instead of letting things rot.