So why do you fail to finish what you start? Or in my case, why do I fail to even get started?
There is a wealth of information out there about how to avoid procrastination, how to get started and how to finish what you start and yet for so many of us this area is huge problem.
A good friend of mine is a successful clinical psychologist and academic with an applied doctorate, two masters and a graduate degree under her belt. She has extensive interests outside of her professional pursuits, including the Chair of a medium sized charity and acting as mentor to a number of up and coming doctoral students. As you have gathered she is a highly accomplished and successful person!
And yet... as she was sharing with me recently - every time that she has a new project to commence or a report to write or a clinical assessment to complete she procrastinates and leaves it to the last minute - often staying up until the early hours in order to complete the task. In fact she said that the only way she can complete these things is by putting herself under so much time pressure that she just has to get on and do it.
Now it's my turn to share the spotlight of shame! This very article that you are reading now sat in a draft template on my website's server for about 4 months whilst I wrote about 30 other articles. Why?
I know of a number of other intelligent capable people who share the same behaviour. Why do we behave like this?
Ego is the enemy
Ryan Holiday popularized that phrase with a book of the same name:"Ego is the enemy" he says: "because it prefers talking over doing".
Peter Hollins, author of "Finish What You Start" says that:
"The ego doesn't want to admit weakness or risk failure so it puts up a 'perfectionism' roadblock by raising the finishing requirements.
With the
finishing requirements seemingly out of reach, you lose interest and fail to
finish what you started."
You're hardwired not to bother finishing
There is one further reason why you fail to finish what you start and that is that the human brain did not evolve for a life of delayed gratification it is hardwired for immediate gratification.
This causes a constant conflict because it assesses potential rewards by ascribing a higher value to the present and a discount to the future.
In practical terms this means that we would rather sit around eating biscuits and sipping coffee rather than take the next step in finishing what we have started - or in some cases even getting started in the first place!
So the cards are stacked against us.
Here are 4 key tips to finish what you start, and all based on extensive personal experience.
You may find some of these tips counter-intuitive, but believe me they do work and are effective.
[1] Have a quitting strategy in place right up front
Quitting just because you are feeling bored, stuck or uninspired is usually a bad idea because it is usually based on subjective and emotional factors.
In my experience here are 2 powerful reasons to abort the project and not finish what you started:
The beauty of having this strategy in place is that you know you can bail out if you need too. There is no need for lots of angst and time wasting.
But, if neither of these criteria apply, then move on to the next key tip and finish what you start.
[2] Have a delivery mentality
Near enough can be good enough to make the initial delivery.
This process is known as satisficing.
Always make the delivery date.
Rather than driving yourself crazy trying to finish what you started to a level of perfection, just deliver it as soon as your project or initiative reaches a basic acceptable level or when you have reached the due date for finishing/delivering it.
"Delivering it" is defined by the parameters of what you are doing. In my case, with this article, I will have reached that initial delivery point as soon as I have structured this web page, added the content and formatted it. I will then post the page live online on this site.
Adopt an iterative approach.
BUT, here's the secret sauce - after you have delivered you can go back multiple times and modify, improve and enhance your project.
In subsequent days after I have posted this article I will go back and make improvements - usually several times.
There is a hidden benefit in this iterative approach - an early delivery or release of the initiative creates an opportunity to evaluate it in a live or real time environment - and especially from a reader's [or user's] perspective. This leads to better improvements and a more optimized "end product".
Let me give you a real-life example of this on a much larger scale.
Some years ago I was working with a programme director on a very large IT project. There were continual delays on getting each phase of the software released and delivered by the developers, and key project milestones were being missed.
We changed the delivery protocol with the developers and insisted they always deliver on time. The project milestones had to be hit.
As you can imagine, the developers [these were 3 large sub-contracting companies] went crazy and said they could not meet these deadlines and deliver to full specification.
We told them to deliver what was ready by the due date - regardless of the level of completion - and then to issue subsequent updated releases over the following week or two until the original delivery was at full spec.
Improve the end user/customer's experience
This also gave the business users early visibility of the software as it was being built and subsequently led to higher, and earlier, levels of user acceptance.
Following this change of procedure we ensured that all subsequent 181 milestones were hit [not one was missed] over the following 9 months.
The system was delivered on time and in budget and passed all user acceptance testing with flying colours!
[3] Have a process for getting started
You need to have a predetermined simple process to help you get started and to help you get better at getting started.
This isn't rocket science, but it never fails to amaze me how many otherwise bright people I have known who don't have this.
Here are 3 simple and proven steps:
[4] Have your ego as your ally
We noted above how Ryan Holiday described ego as the enemy.
I recommend that you spin that around and get your ego onboard as your ally.
One of the biggest problems for your ego is boredom and not having enough to do. You may recall the old wives saying that "the devil finds work for idle hands to do" - well this is especially true for the ego.
My final suggestion for how to finish what you start is to get your ego involved - give it something useful to do. I recommend 2 stages:
Next Article: Going The Extra Mile - The Power Of One More
Return from "Finish What You Start" to: Walking The Talk
- What if everything we think…
LATEST ARTICLES
Everything Is Connected And Why You Don't Feel It
...And Why It Matters
As human beings we are skating on very thin ice with our sense of self and certainty about "how things are" and what we like to think of as reality:
Who Is In Charge Of Your Brain?
How Not To Be Stupid. Who is in charge of your brain? This is not a silly questions. It matters because the outcomes that you experience in your life are determined by how you respond to the events th…
How To Be A Winner On A Very Large Scale
The Incredible Benefits Of Selective Attention. This is not a typical article about how to be a winner. We are not going to talk about goal setting, the importance of habits, the power of focus and al…
The Metagame Approach To Life
How To Achieve Your Biggest Objectives.
The metagame approach to life is all about winning and achieving your biggest objectives by:
- Understanding the bigger picture
- Being better by doing things d…Shantideva - The Way Of The Bodhisattva
Walking The Path Of Compassion. Shantideva the 8th century Indian Buddhist sage is famous for his treatise "The Way of the Bodhisattva" delivered as an extended teaching to the monks of Nalanda monast…
Reframing History - Deconstruction And Discussion Not Destruction
History is always about context, not imposing our own moral values on the past. For those of us fortunate enough to live within western democracies, we are living in an age where a vociferous and into…
Tao Te Ching - Connecting To Your True Source Of Power.
How To Be Lived By The Tao. The Tao Te Ching is one of those books that many people read, few understand, and even fewer put into practice. The only way to know the Tao is to experience it, and it is…
How Things Really Are - The Inbuilt Design Flaws
Chaos, Disorder And Decay Is The Natural Order Of Things. Nobody has the perfect life. We all struggle and strive to attain health, wealth and personal happiness. Yet these three big areas: our health…
Intuition Or Anxiety - Are There Angels Or Devils Crawling Here?
How To Tell The Difference Between Intuition and Anxiety. How do you know whether the voice of your intuition is real or just the product of your inner anxiety? Several months ago I was having a drink…
What Is Truth - How To Tell A Partial Truth From The Whole Truth?
How the truth and nothing but the truth is often not the whole truth. My great aunty Flo broke her arm and died. It is true that she broke her arm in 1923. It is also true that she died in 1949. But t…
Duality And Life Beyond Your Thinking Mind
Duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuses on the limitations of time, foreground and background, duality and "stuckness". The first aspect of duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuse…
The Conscious Mind Is Limited - Be Aware And Be Prepared
Being aware is the first stage of being prepared. The conscious mind is limited in so many ways. There are some who would argue that there is no such thing as conscious thought and that it is represen…
Your Inner Map Of Reality - Here's Why You Think The Way You Do
The big picture of how your inner map of reality creates your feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. Your inner map of reality is based on the filters of your own ethnic, national, social, family and rel…
The Failure Of Cancel Culture - Suppression Not Engagement
Why we need to wear our beliefs lightly and develop negative capability. Throughout history people have campaigned to fight beliefs, ideologies, and injustices that they perceived to be oppressive, di…
4 Big Reasons Why We Get Stuck In Our Attempts At Personal Change
Most People Spend Their Entire Life Imprisoned Within The Confines Of Their Own Thoughts. This first of the 4 big reasons why we get stuck is, in my view, the most important. The "self-help industry…
How Do I Change And Why Is It So Hard?
We Would Rather Die Than Change, And We Usually Do In my experience, the vast majority of people who say they want to change don’t change. Most people reading this won’t change because they don’t real…
The Illusion Of A Separate Self - Windows 11 With Self Awareness!
Beyond the content of your mind you are so much more than you think you are. When we talk of "myself" this is the conventional way of referring to our self image which is in fact the ego's constructio…
Finite And Infinite Games - Dazed, Confused & Ultimately Transcendent
This is not an instruction manual, it is a wake up call!
Over this past week I have read Professor James Carse's highly regarded "Finite And Infinite Games - A Vision Of Life As Play And Possibility"…
The Gap And The Gain - How Your Brain Sabotages Your Happiness
How Your Lizard Brain Sabotages Your Happiness We are hardwired to measure our progress in any and all areas of life where we have goals and aspirations. We can't not do it. But what we measure and ho…
How To Wake Up - 4 Simple Practices To Help You Wake Up Now
So What Exactly Does It Mean to Wake Up - What Is "Enlightenment"? There is nothing magical, mystical or mysterious about waking up we’re actually having glimpses of enlightenment all the time. Enligh…
Situational Communication - Different Strokes For Different Folks
Situational communication is about taking account of 3 often ignored factors about the other person. You are a situational communicator when you recognise that effective communication is not an event…
How To Influence Without Authority - 6 Key Tips
The secret to how to influence without authority is that you get what you really want by giving other people what they really want. We live in an interconnected world and knowing how to influence with…
Change Questions To Change Your Outcomes
Asking The Right Questions Is Critical For A Successful Change. Every time we initiate a significant change - whether in our personal life or in an organisation - we will most likely over-estimate our…
Group Culture - The Invisible Software That Rules Your Life
Group culture is: "How we do things round here". We like to see ourselves as free agents making our own choices and living authentically but the reality is that The Matrix has many layers and we are u…
Why Getting From A to B Is Not Aways A Straight Line
In circumstances of significant change, the progress from A to B will not be in a straight line. We run our lives largely on auto-pilot. In most circumstances your experience of getting from A to B is…
The Art Of Persuasion Planning For Success - Here's How To Do It!
To be successful in the art of persuasion you must ensure that certain things happen. To be successful in the art of persuasion you must establish a framework of what has to happen to get you to that…
The Art Of Persuasion Advanced Communication Skills - Gaining Buyin
Create The Environment Where They Want To Buyin to Your Proposal In order to build the win-win you have to uncover what it is that the other person really wants or needs, and to do that you have to as…
The Art Of Persuasion The One Fundamental Principle - Create A Win-Win
The art of persuasion is based on the simple idea that you get what you want by enabling the other party to get what they want. Being a nice friendly person with good inter-personal skills may be a go…
Communication Persuasion And Change - Key Skills To Survive & Succeed
It's not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those who are most responsive to change, the most persuasive, and the best communicators. We are living in an age of unprecedented ch…
The Eisenhower Box - What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent
What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent And What Is Urgent Is Seldom Important. The Eisenhower Box is a time management and decision-making model devised by President Dwight Eisenhower to help him prioriti…