Don't finish what you start - Start more of what you finish
+ other ideas guiding your motivation
New ideas and projects are the things that drive us to change and become who we were born to be.
They are also where we fall down. We learn important lessons but we can waste a lot of time and learn much faster with some introspection.
“I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.”– Coco Chanel
I want you to stop putting yourself through the stress and pain of striving to finish things that aren't right for you.
You can start many books but you shouldn't finish them all.
If a book is becoming an unrewarding challenge it is better to start new ones that excite you to read more.
It’s the same with ideas and projects.
Keep moving
You can have many ideas, it's great to test them out. It is essential to abandon the ones that are holding you back.
A great idea from years ago blocks your ability to seize the moment today.
Don't tie yourself up with the baggage of old ideas.
1 - Start more of what you finish
It is dumb to hold ourself to the productivity guru concept that we can always work harder or engineer our routine or mindset to finish anything.
Action = Motivation X Ability
The optimal strategy is to double down on our strengths which leads. Lean into our strengths and interests and do things we are good at doing
💡 List the things that when you start them you subsequently finish them.
Remove the ones you don’t enjoy.
Identify the ones that can create value.
Spend more time starting those things.
These are the things that you enjoy, motivate you, your good at them and create value!
Honestly - that is one huge life hack right there.
So often the answer is right in front of us. I would really give this one some time to dwell on.
It led to me leaning into my podcast which has very much been a side project for 5 years and is now growing really well because it has more of my attention.
I could really finish the piece here and feel I’ve added value but, variety is the spice of life so here are some other alternative ideas on how to finish stuff.
Sadly not everything is easy for us but sometimes it needs to get done.
We have new ideas that are important to us we want to finish. So here is my advice on filtering them and making them projects we complete.
2 - Identifying blockers and cures
We often tie ourselves to a much harder way of doing something than we need to. We can learn the habit of making things easier for ourselves.
💡 Striving to be perfect and not finishing means we aren’t creating, we’re just messing around.
To be a creator we must spend time doing things we finish.
Example - My Writing
Perfection in my head
I love writing long thought pieces that go on several tangents and unpack into on grand meta-theory on life the universe and pretty much everything.
I try to cover every single edge case because I worry that there will be odd scenarios where my logic is flawed.
I have to re-edit umpteen times, which I hate doing and put off.
Those posts are rather hard to finish writing and just as hard for the reader to finish reading.
Clarity on the goal
Instead, I set myself a more concise word and time limit to express a reduced version of what I want people to think.
It requires difficult decisions on priorities, but the work becomes easier to finish.
It also pushes my creativity to invent better analogies that cover more of my bases up front.
☝ In coding you can solve any problem with a million ‘if’ statements and ‘for’ loops.
A good coder packages logic into concise and readable functions to make cleaner code.
Each function should deliver a consistent output with a degree of edge cases considered, the more edge cases required the more complex the function (and sub functions).
With writing, you can explain every single thing you want, thought by thought. Ultimately you have a bunch of outputs you want the reader to understand.
Stories and analogies are like your functions to clean up your mess of thoughts.
(I really enjoy directly contradicting myself and I saw a chance to throw in a completely unneccesary tangent and took it - you’re welcome)
Lesson
Removing non-essential blockers from something I want to do creates something I finish.
3 - Dangerous blockers we can’t/won’t beat
There are lots of tasks that have elements we really enjoy. If there is an element we don’t enjoy, we could be in for trouble.
When we can’t make it easier or enjoyable we need to be realistic with ourselves.
We need to review the full path in a process and identify the parts we don't like or it won't get finished.
The Do it, Delegate or Delete framework for a task is great.
Accounting is boring but I have to do it, if I really struggled I could delegate instead. Marketing for my pod is boring and it grows (perhaps less fast) without it so I ignore marketing. This means I still have energy to podcast and the whole thing can still be fun which is more successful that tying myself to being bored.
But there are some things we can’t delegate or ignore.
With Ketogenic diet your body burns fat instead of carbs, (in the diet you eat mostly fat, some protein and no carbs).
Some people love the concept that fat is healthy and you can lose weight. They immediately start to eat more fat, but they don’t get round to avoiding all carbs.
Up their calories and never in ketosis. They just get fatter 🤦♀️
Sometimes it can damage you to pick the parts of a process you feel like doing. Most people are never going to follow a diet so extreme and should look for a different way to become healthy.
With a growth mindset you can do anything. But you can’t do everything. It is better to focus on your strengths and not try to battle every blocker you have and accept them.
Don’t start things which are bad to not finish.
So I would update the framework to: Do it, Delegate it, Delete it, Don’t even
4 - Say no to things
Paid work and tasked we get asked to do can define our routine and our life.
If the work doesn’t align with us it can drain us and make it harder to motivate ourselves to start other things.
Action = Motivation x Ability.
If you are tired from work that you don’t enjoy then you won’t have motivation or ability to do other stuff.
If you struggle to finish ideas your passionate about it can be because you are too busy and blocked by things you aren’t bothered about.
Have a framework for what you will say no to.
Value your time.
Time is limited.
Naval Ravikant put a hypothetical valuation of his time as $1000/hour to take himself seriously.
Look at your goals and ask yourself if what you spend your time on is pushing you in the right direction.
Are you getting the value out of yourself that you are worth or are you wasting your potential?
It is easy to keep doing things because that’s what we always did them. We need to ask ourselves when things are worthwhile or stopping us.
This advice directly contradicts my first point it seems but it’s a useful nuance.
I also looked at my podcast with this framework and decided to not continue with it the way I was doing it.
I’d had an editor for too long that wasn’t doing a brilliant job. Something need to change.
Either I stopped podcasting completely to make space or I took over and sacrificed other things.
5 - Don’t hold onto brilliant ideas
Our amazing ideas feel like they need to be done perfectly.
We need to realise they are just stepping stones to our potential, behind them lie more good ideas we can’t yet imagine.
So here we are again with a different angle on perfection because it SUCKS.
Perfection is an especially big blocker in areas that are new to people and they have a big idea:
A young founder who is scared to share their idea.
A new writer overthinking their book
I have ideas for all sorts of things with many elements to them. A comedy sketch, a product feature, a social media post, a new song.
Creating this idea in its perfect state might require learning a bunch of new skills or take a lot of time I don’t have.
It’s easy to put these ideas into the ‘I’ll get round to them pile’. I wait to be able to do justice for the brilliant thing in my mind.
I develop this stupid sense that this is my best song or comedy sketch idea I’ll ever have.
It feels almost precious, when in fact it’s the opposite.
I stop working on new ideas in that area and lose my creativity for it.
It has become creative baggage.
Creativity is regenerative.
The more we use creativity the more we get rewarded with fun and feedback. If we get over the hurdle of just starting we learn more skills and have even better ideas.
Our idea of perfect now might only be 20% of the ultimate potential of our talent.
If we stop and wait we go nowhere.
We should feel comfortable failing and putting ideas out there in their minimal format.
Any one in entrepreneurship knows the Minimal Viable Product is the basic version of your business idea.
Release it as quickly as possible to get feedback that can lead to a business wildly different to our first idea but works
The key is to develop momentum and with that we can then develop skills and better ideas.
Your brilliant idea is just a stepping stone. Don’t let it become a blocker.
Cast your stones and use them for what they are.
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Remember - Value is creating
Ultimately, value is made by the creators and not the consumers. Anything you can regularly and reliably create is making value. As long as you finish.
Writing 30,000 words of a book you don't publish could take half a year of your life. At the end of it you have published 0 books.
Better to write 30 blogs of 1,000 words and publish all of them.
Don't fight an uphill battle pushing on doors that never open. Double down on strengths and think of alternative ways to deal with your weaknesses.
Don't finish what you start, start what you finish.
Questions to reflect on
Which tasks do I reliably finish?
Could some of them create value if I did more of them?
What are my unfinished projects?
What are the specific tasks within the project that I avoid?
How can I make it more likely to complete the difficult task?
(Make it smaller / delegate it / change the time / do it with others)
Can I remove the difficult tasks entirely?
Do I start things which I know I won’t finish and might be damaging?
What is my goal in starting them?
Is there a very different way to get there?
How much time do I put into things I don’t enjoy?
If I value my time how would I prioritise what I start?
What are my best ideas I’ve never done?
Can I let go of perfect and enjoy making an easier version
ShortForm
I’ve conveniently just been sponsored by Shortform.
They make great book summaries AND they also have exercises to test your knowledge 🤓
If you feel like abandoning a slow book, now you can enjoy the take homes here 🤟
shortform.com/growth will give you 5 days free trial and 20% off a years subscription.
How to finish what you start
One of my favourite YouTubers (Struthless) has a highly edutaining video on creativity and finishing things. (he drew the artwork at the top)
The logical next step after this post is the specifics of completing a thing you want to finish once started.
This is enjoyable and insightful at the same time.