> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://mitchellens.ink/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Define the shape of your work - URL: https://mitchellens.ink/systems/advance/define-the-shape-of-your-work/ - Published: 2026-03-23T12:22:59.000Z - Updated: 2026-05-15T10:04:10.000Z - Description: If you can imagine the final form your work should take, you can determine how much time and effort you should invest right now. Projects should be smaller before they become bigger. Loops should be shorter before they become longer. - Author: Mitchel Lensink - Tags: Advance, Systems Before I start working on things, I like to get an idea of 'the shape' of the work I'm about to do. It's about answering the question "What should this work look like, at the end of this process?" When I'm writing, for example, my work can take on the shape of a quick note, a blog post, an essay, a toolkit, maybe even a book, etcetera. **Determining the shape of the work, determines the amount of effort it should take.** Obviously, a quick note can turn into a blog post, which might turn into an essay, that could end up becoming a book, but point is that you should typically follow this exact process. You have to be honest with yourself about the project you are starting. Or in our newly learned jargon, about "the loop you are opening." Your goal is to keep this loop as small as possible and only making it bigger when it absolutely needs to be. In our writing example, this means that your aim shouldn't be to 'write a book.' Books don't emerge out of thin air. Good books need good ideas, that have been good ideas for a while. Ideas that stood the test of time, were reflected on a little, perhaps even adjusted in the process. Writing a book is a gigantic loop that requires a level of commitment you have to be certain about. Instead, it's much better to 'write a quick note' and get that initial thought out of your head, onto the paper, and calling that 'done.' That's a tiny two-minute loop, that can then be closed, and stored for later reference. Do you find yourself returning to that note over time? Then it might be warranted to open a slightly bigger loop of turning that note into a blog post. Blog posts are a nice step up because they are a public display of that note. They need to be a little more fleshed out, in order for them to be understandable by people other than yourself. And because blog posts are public, they should be getting some feedback too. If that's the case, awesome. Now you can figure out if there's more to explore that warrants a bigger 'shape' and does, in fact, deserve to be a book. > Determining the shape of the work, determines the amount of effort it should take. Are you still with me? The above took me a while to see clearly. Mostly because I kept looking for the problem in the ideas themselves. I assumed that if something wasn’t moving forward, the idea must be wrong, or at least not good enough yet. In reality, the ideas were often fine. What was broken was the container I was trying to shove these ideas in. Most creative frustration doesn’t come from a lack of inspiration. It comes from good ideas placed in forms that don’t support them. As a result, expectations of what the result should be stay vague or become far too great to ever meet. And let me tell you, it's super demotivating to see ideas slowly fizzle out because they were not allowed to be what they needed to be. ### Good idea, wrong container When work feels good, it’s rarely because the subject matter is perfect. It’s because the shape you're making that work for fits. The tempo matches the energy. The scope matches the required attention span. The time you spend working on it respects the fact that focus is temporary and fragile, and you're spending it sparingly. Momentum, when it appears, is a narrow window. You feel it when ideas connect faster than you can write them down, when your attention sharpens instead scatters. It's a wonderful state to be in. It even has an official name, flow state, and it occurs when your skills and the challenge at hand are well matched. Sadly, it's also a temporary state. So we best make use of it while we can, and aim to work in short loops to ensure that, once this state wanes off eventually, we at least have something *done*. If a loop stays open too long, you can feel the intensity slowly decreasing. Not because you suddenly lost motivation, but because attention doesn’t survive indefinite ambiguity. That's not just you, that's just human biology. **So when the container is wrong and the feedback loops too long, even strong ideas start to dissolve over time.** That probably doesn't mean you stop working. You just stop feeling forward momentum. And without that feedback, progress becomes harder to recognize, even when the effort is real. ### An open-ended drain Every open loop occupies mental bandwidth, whether you’re actively working on it or not. It hums in the background. It competes quietly with whatever is in front of you. When too many loops stay open at once, your attention doesn’t shatter. It thins. Gradually and persistently. Psychology has long observed that unfinished goals tend to remain cognitively active. In the 1920s, Bluma Zeigarnik already reported that people appeared to recall unfinished tasks more readily than completed ones. While later research has debated the strength of that memory effect, a related finding has remained influential: goals that lack closure tend to stay mentally activated. > When too many loops stay open at once, your attention doesn’t shatter. It thins. Gradually and persistently. In practical terms, unfinished work can create a subtle cognitive tension. Not necessarily dramatic or conscious, but persistent. The mind keeps the goal “open” because it has no clear boundary that signals completion. What’s more interesting is this: resolution is not the only way to reduce that tension. Later research shows that forming a concrete plan can quiet an unfinished goal almost as effectively as completing it. The mind does not require immediate closure. It requires structure. Left undefined, open loops accumulate. Each one carries a small charge, barely noticeable on its own. But stack enough of them together and the system strains. Like a computer needing to keep too many programs running at once, slowly filling up its RAM and becoming sluggish and inefficient in the process. Attention doesn’t collapse all at once. It frays. Slowly. This is where people often misdiagnose the problem. They think they need better time management, more discipline, or a new productivity system. But the real problem is often structural. The open loop itself has no form. Projects remain open-ended. Direction stays negotiable. Progress becomes difficult to measure, even internally. The mind keeps the goal active because it has no clear boundary and no way to put and end to it. Short loops aren’t about rushing, they’re about *containment*. Not short at all costs, but as short as they can reasonably be. Some loops need to be long, and that’s totally fine. Just try to not have too many of these open at the same time. Many loops are long by accident, stretched by unclear expectations and the absence of a defined ending. When a loop has edges, the tension decreases. When it doesn’t, the system keeps holding it open, the tension doesn't go away, and *that's* what drains your energy. > Many loops are long by accident, stretched by unclear expectations and the absence of a defined ending. ### How to still work on large projects Scale itself isn’t the enemy. Large projects, inherently being large loops too, can work perfectly fine, as long as they’re composed of smaller loops that actually close. Loops that end, return feedback, and create a sense of resolution before the next one begins. Without that internal structure, large projects start to feel amorphous. Everything depends on everything else. Nothing can be finished yet, because something upstream or downstream might still change. Over time, this turns complexity into paralysis. **Breaking a project down into smaller loops, or smaller projects, if you will, isn’t about making the project smaller in ambition. It’s about making it finishable in pieces.** Each closed loop creates a moment of learning and feedback and therefore continues to feed your confidence. Each little ending in the process creates a place to stand still for a moment, assess the situation, take note of your accomplishments, and the challenges still remaining, before you then take the next step. ### Collaboration vs. diffused ownership Let's be clear about this: Collaboration itself isn’t the problem. Working with other people can be mutually beneficial and elevating in ways you could never achieve on your own. The friction starts when ownership becomes unclear. The moment progress depends on someone else’s availability, approval, or energy, resolution slows. Not because people are unreliable, but because responsibility becomes shared in a vague way. If it’s unclear who carries the ending, you can end up circling decisions. Looking at each other. Waiting. No one quite stepping forward because stepping forward feels like overstepping. The fix isn’t to avoid collaboration. It’s to *own the ending*. Give the project a shape. Decide who carries it across the finish line. Collaborate freely, but build it in a way that could, if needed, still be completed by one person. **Projects that can be completed solo aren’t anti-social. They’re structurally resilient.** They allow you to close loops without waiting for alignment, which paradoxically makes later collaboration healthier, not worse. When you know you can finish things on your own, you enter collaboration from a position of agency instead of dependency. ### You can, but only if… There’s a quieter constraint that shows up in how many people relate to their work: conditional permission. These are the invisible rules we carry without realizing it. Rules like "first this, then that," or "only once X is done can I work on Y," or "this doesn’t really matter until it reaches a certain level." This is what happens when the work gets treated as linear, even though learning never is. As we know by now, the reality of learning is that it moves in cycles. You try something, you see what happens, you adjust. When linear rules are imposed on inherently cyclical work, nothing can ever really feel finished. Decisions stay temporary, completion keeps drifting forward, and proper evaluation never quite happens. What starts as healthy ambition slowly turns into constant tension. You’re always preparing to begin, but are rarely allowed to finish. ### Lower the stakes, finish the job What actually protects completion isn’t discipline or willpower. It’s form. People that are able to finish projects are able to lower the stakes of their project accordingly and they lower them early, preferably even before starting. Mind you, *lowering the stakes does not mean lowering the ambition*. It means designing the work in such a way that it's actually achievable. Your project needs a final shape that you can see before you start. When a project is small enough, concrete enough, and clearly owned by one person, doubt doesn’t get much time to grow. The internal critic we have inside of us thrives on long durations and a lot of vagueness. Short, well-defined loops nip that little sucker in the butt from the start. In order to achieve this, I am a fan of having some sort of 'definition of success.' Having a definition of success is about asking yourself "when we are done with this project, what does success actually *look* like? What have we physically *done*? What have we *changed* in the world? Who have we *reached*? What have we *achieved*?" It's your north star when defining your strategy. What I'd argue is even more important though, isn't necessarily your definition of success, but your *definition of done*. That distinction matters. Finishing doesn’t necessarily mean 'winning.' It just means the loop is closed. **A project can fail and still be complete. And completion is what makes evaluation, learning, and growth possible**. Think of it like this: the winners played the match. But so did the losers. No matter if you won or lost the game, you've played it and that taught you something, perhaps the losers even more so than the winners, so both teams are better than they were before. Only the ones who never played stayed exactly the same. 💡 ****Definition of Done (vs. Definition of Success)** A definition of done specifies **the exact condition that marks a loop as complete*. It is **binary* and **observable*. A definition of success describes **a preferred outcome after completion*. In this framework, a loop is valuable once it is done, regardless of whether it is successful (although, ideally, you still have both of course.) Defining the shape of your work isn’t about limiting yourself. It’s about creating conditions where a project has a chance of being completed. A way for learning to actually take place. Without closed loops, feedback never fully arrives and progress remains abstract. > A project can fail and still be complete. And completion is what makes evaluation, learning, and growth possible.