Throwing off a weight

Any journey comes to an end. In part, reaching your destination after so much hardship is perfectly sweet. But it’s also the end of a probably important passage to you. You can only explore any place once, and that one time has passed on this occasion. No wonder that you might feel slightly beside yourself and not just over the moon.

Take a bit of time off to adjust to your new status quo. Having completed a big project will likely leave you slightly hollowed out—tasks that filled your to-do list have disappeared, thoughts that occupied your mind might still be around, but they can no longer become productive. The opportunity to make adjustments has, for better or worse, come and gone. Ideally, you feel it was about time for the project to be finally submitted. Time to calm down for a bit.

Research, to a degree, also means completing and letting go of projects. These more intense and apparently more important multi-month or multi-year projects in particular may leave you with just as many mixed feelings as a long and challenging journey. Take your time to realize what you have accomplished.

(This is a preview section. The full chapter on this topic continues with the sections “Rough coordinates”, “Train of thought”, “In essence”, “To reflect”, “Two travellers’ tales”, “Devil’s advocate”, and “How to tackle”.)