Every
construction project remains unfinished until the completion of a final sign-off
“Punch List”: a list of final “finishing” details, as well as a list of mistakes
and imperfections (things which fail to conform to the architect’s original specifications)
that must be corrected.
Historically (before the
invention of the iPad), major construction sites – where it’s easy for paper to
get lost – would have the punch list fastened to a wooden post or “Punch Board”
in a prominent, centralized location. As each item was completed, a worker responsible
for each task would use a nail to “punch” a hole next to each completed item.
Only after every item on the punch list was completed or corrected could the
job supervisor truly declare, “It is finished.”
Life is like that.
Our “Punch List” of items to be certifiably completed according to
specifications embedded in our specific genetic code (i.e., reflecting our true
potential), and decreed by the society within which we aspire to gain entitlements
and exercise our “inalienable rights”, is quite long.
On our personal construction site, there are actually TWO
“Punch Lists” … one that we administer personally and one administered
externally. The more closely the two
lists agree, and the more efficiently the tasks are completed, the more
manageable the overall passage tends to be – notwithstanding inherent
difficulties of certain items populating the “Punch Lists”.
A great many items that will eventually appear on the two
Punch Lists are irrelevant early on and are not posted on our Personal Punch
List until they ARE relevant. One does
not require certification in algebra, for example, for matriculation through
kindergarten. This is the good news and
bad news. While posting only items
relevant to the present or near future minimizes undue angst, it gives one an
artificially “low-balled” sense of indemnification for anything that may
follow. Consider Robert Fulghum’s
assertion:
“All I Really Need To Know
I Learned In Kindergarten.”
Unfortunately, this “Chicken Soup for the Soul” offering doesn’t quite
cover the entire waterfront!
In fact, the “Need to Know” list is a continuously rolling scroll, and we
need to keep getting our “Punch List” punched at every significant intersection
of life, else the scroll goes off track.
Some people are compulsive about “Needing to Know” and “roll the scroll”
forward as far and as fast as they can to see what’s coming. Alertness, awareness, planning, preparation
and “tooling up” for what’s coming gives one a decided advantage – an “unfair”
advantage, in fact, by “Standards of Mediocrity”.
And just how do you “Roll the Scroll”?
By connecting with people who have “BEEN THERE” … who know the territory
… who have been and seen and done … who have fallen and picked themselves up
and moved on … who have encountered and overcome barriers … Those who have completed more of the Punch
Lists for life-tracks most similar to the one you’re on – or wannabe – will be
most helpful.
Be compulsive. NEED TO KNOW, and GO GET WHAT YOU NEED! And try to get as much of it “Right” as possible. The Punch List is scrolling. Quartermaster
Paul Cézanne (at age 67) wrote to a younger friend,
the painter Émile Bernard:
“Now it seems to me
that I see better and that I think more correctly about the direction of my
studies. Will I ever attain the end for which I have striven so much and so
long? I hope so, but as long as it is not attained a vague state of uneasiness
persists which will not disappear until I have reached port, that is until I
have realized something which develops better than in the past, … ; it is giving proof of what one thinks that
raises serious obstacles. So I continue to study. ... “
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