When Your Work Is Ready, But the World Isn’t
We believe in our products, we lose faith when they aren't realized
I say to you… argh.
There is the special kind of frustration you are blessed with as a creator. A project is finished, meaningful, and ready for action, but sits idle because the world’s logistics, costs, or timing intervene. The Toxic Waste book is in exactly that limbo. The ideas are solid, the writing is complete, the value is clear, but PR, layout, and other considerations are real and just simply barriers for release.
The work itself has this weight, you know it is there…not doing anything. You might be able to ignore it for a while, but it is there. Today in our monthly Toxic Wednesday call, people asked “Where is the book?” And “it’s waiting” is a horrible answer for them and for me.
The Real Costs of “Not Yet”
So this is a finished product that can’t ship and, for me, the cost is both financial and deeply personal:
Opportunity Costs: Energy continues to be spent on maintenance and managing “readiness” instead of opening new doors, nurturing communities, seeing the material help people, or even simply generating revenue.
Momentum Loss: The lived energy, enthusiasm, and insights that surged during creation start to fade, losing their edge and relevance. (If you ever write a book, this is true for almost all books).
Emotional Toll: Creative work is emotionally charged. When it’s shelved by “practicalities” leads to fatigue, detachment, and even self-doubt about the worth of the effort.
Delayed Impact: The work can’t do what it’s designed to do. I wrote this thing to help others, shape conversations, prompt change. Every day of delay is a day without impact.
Aargh.
Why It Hurts to Watch Good Work Wait
This isn’t just me. This isn’t just about business efficiency. This is about human beings seeing their work completed and helping people.
One of the major toxicities we look at is redirection…where a team gets work, does a significant amount of it, spends their time, energy, creativity on it. Then they are moved to another project or the project is cancelled (the whole team is moved) and the professionals don’t see return on their investment.
When we work, we all invest. Even if we get paid, we are investing literally parts of our lives into seeing that work get completed. If the work is undervalued, then we have lost value.
So, personal, team, and societal aspirations behind something like the Toxic Waste book feel like failure when the release id delayed. As I say in the book, the feeling of being “stuck” (unable to act with confidence or finish what you start) is a root cause of professional frustration and toxicity.
So it’s important as leaders, managers and team members to recognize that when teams or creators have to wait on release:
Motivation and engagement drop.
The risk of shelving or losing relevance climbs.
Doubts and “what ifs” become the new conversation and drown out the original purpose of the work.
This means that we, as professionals or as management, need to recognize the value in both completion and seeing to when completion will have return.
How to Pause Without Being Upset
While you can’t always resolve blockers or bottlenecks or just reality, we can build pragmatic ways around this pain and make this “waiting” time productive. Here’s what I’m doing in this case, but you can do it in yours. (Everyone is waiting for something).
Making Value Visible: I am continuing to share excerpts, frameworks, insights etc drawn from the book. And discussing Toxicity in workshops, newsletters, or social media. The messages continue circulate, even if the book isn’t ready. (And, yes, the book will need to be edited yet again to include new learning).
Engaging the Community: I am having conversations with the people in the course about themes in the book. These virtual events are part of the class, but they are also keeping me personally grounded and motivated, and making some pretty tight friendships.
The Class: The Cleaning Toxic Waste class is being added to (as is posts in this substack). Keeping the project evolving.
Document the Journey: Um…uh…how meta. This post. Share the honest story behind the pause. Others resonate with the reality of finished work waiting for its time. Build stronger connections and signal that the best work requires both patience and advocacy.
If You’re Stuck in the Waiting Room
This situation is common, like painfully common. It is never easy. It’s easy to take it personally. It’s easy for the dwell time to be a direct measurement of failure. This is because you value the thing and you want to share the thing, but the thing is … sitting there.
The “sitting” isn’t a judgment on the work’s value, but simply the need to navigate systems, relationships, and timing. Patience and ability to keep the work’s spirit alive become their own forms of expertise. Burnout and ennui are constant threats. Visualize the path to completion and know that some steps take longer than others.
And feel free to reach out if the frustration builds up. Toni and I are always here.
Come join the conversation
If you are a leader or a team member that wants to confront the toxicity in the room, please check these courses out and join the conversation.
Cleaning Toxic Waste Is a toolkit and a community for restoring health at work.
WIP Whisperer helps you visualize your overload, manage it more humanely, and rediscover pride in what you do.
This was a really impactful post to me, especially as I didn't realise it was common enough to actually be written about. It definitely happened to me as a two-year focused effort that I /know/ makes a huge difference is currently in the waiting room. Timing is so critical with the learning process - I never thought of timing applied in that way to our business products.