When you near finishing, you ask yourself; Did you accomplish all of your desired goals? Did you follow the outline which you designed, or were given on how to accomplish the goal? Did you meet the requirements needed for a positive outcome?
There are so many other questions involved in such a situation, but the most important question is:
Did you learn anything??
I have been meditating on this today due to a recent situation. I was recently asked to accomplish something that I knew beyond a doubt I could do in a short amount of time. The outline was simple:
I had a working model within a few hours, and presented it. Feeling good about it, but feeling like something was missing at the same time. I quickly forgot about it, finished up the project and let the requester do with it what they pleased. By the end of the day, this "lack of feeling" so to speak was bugging me. So I went back, reviewed the project to make sure I didn't screw something up, and make sure it wasn't sloppy. Having already done this once, I realized what the problem was. I didn't feel that I accomplished anything. I hadn't taken anything from that quick little project. In other words, I didn't learn anything. Working on this feeling, I grabbed the project, and looked to see if there were any ways to improve it, or go about it differently. After a day or so, I had re-worked the project and felt that I had improved the results, and felt satisfied that I had learned something.
I proved myself and improved my skills in this situation, and that gives me a wonderful feeling..
Why I didn't do it that way the first time is another matter ;-)~.
I'm sure none of you really care about my story, however I thought it might motivate some of you to share a story of how Perl helped prove/improve your self/skills.
-- Can't never could do anything, so give me and inch, I'll make it a mile.