When the Work Goes Quiet - The Unfinished Vizzes

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about all the things I’ve started but never finished. Not just dashboards or projects, but ideas, sketches, and workbooks I was excited about for a moment — and then quietly closed, never to be reopened.

If I’m honest, I used to carry a lot of guilt about this. Why do I have so many half-built things just sitting there? So this is me saying it out loud: I have a lot of unfinished vizzes, and I’m starting to believe that might actually be a good thing.

When the Spark Just… Leaves

I’ve been using Tableau for nearly a decade now. It’s one of my favorite creative outlets, but sometimes I hit a wall. Suddenly, everything starts to feel the same — another bar chart, another artsy experiment, another idea that just doesn’t come together the way I hoped.

Sometimes I lose the story. Sometimes I get bored. And sometimes I’m just plain tired.

There are also very real seasons of life when creativity has to take a backseat. I have four boys — two sets of twins — and a full-time job, and some days I barely have the mental energy to decide what’s for dinner, let alone create something beautiful.

So projects get shelved. Not because I don’t care, but because I’m human.

The “Hidden” Shelf No One Talks About

One of the things I love most about Tableau Public is the ability to publish work and keep it hidden. I use that feature constantly.

I start projects, pour myself into them, and when they aren’t ready — emotionally or creatively — I hide them away. It’s not shame; it’s safety. A quiet shelf where ideas can rest without judgment.

Recently, Heather Cox, Kimberly Scott, and Steve Wood started a series called Unfinished Vizness, where they interview people about their projects that never made it to the finish line. Watching it was like cracking open a window in a stuffy room. It inspired me to open my own shelf, and wow — there was a lot waiting there.

The One That’s Been Waiting Six Years

There’s a viz I’ve carried for about six years, inspired by the glass artist Dale Chihuly. Every few months, I tell myself I’m going to finish it — but I never do. It’s not that I don’t love the idea; it’s that the data never fully worked. I built this cool X/Y dot layout, but the dots weren’t tied to real places — they were just floating. It’s hard to tell a meaningful story when your data doesn’t mean what you need it to mean.

So it sat. Until recently, when I opened it again — not to finish, but just to play.

Stuck in the Lurch

This reminded me of a passage from Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss about being “stuck in the Lurch” — that place where everyone else seems to be flying forward, and you feel left behind, wondering if you’ve lost your way.

"You can get all hung up

in a prickle-ly perch.

And your gang will fly on.

You'll be left in a Lurch.

You'll come down from the Lurch

with an unpleasant bump.

And the chances are, then,

that you'll be in a Slump.

When you're in a Slump,

you're not in for much fun.

Un-slumping yourself

is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.

headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place..."

Questioning yourself. Feeling behind.

That’s what unfinished projects started to feel like for me.

Like proof that I wasn’t good enough. Fast enough. Creative enough.

But I don’t think that anymore.

Now I think unfinished is where the real work happens.

Failing Forward (And Why It Matters)

Not everything I create is going to be a masterpiece, and that’s okay. Some projects are experiments — small steps that help me explore ideas or warm-ups that get my creative muscles moving again. Sometimes, they’re just ways to remember how to feel inspired.

That isn’t failure. It’s what I like to call failing forward.

It’s about learning what doesn’t work so that I can eventually discover what does. Every unfinished project holds a lesson, a clue that nudges me closer to something meaningful.

Maybe “Unfinished” Isn’t a Bad Word

Lately, when I don’t have a big, shiny project on my plate, I’ll revisit something unfinished. I might tweak a label, adjust a color, or try something unexpected — just to see where it takes me.

Sometimes those little changes lead nowhere, but other times, they spark a new idea that lights a fresh fire. Both outcomes are valuable parts of the creative journey.

If You’ve Got Your Own Shelf

If you have work tucked away somewhere — projects that never quite made it out into the world — I hope you don’t see that as failure.

Instead, see it as proof you tried. Proof you were brave enough to start.

Unfinished doesn’t mean you’re behind. Sometimes, it simply means you’re still becoming.