How to Finish
There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on. ~Robert Byrne
Post written by Leo Babauta.
The early draft of this post sat in my system for about a week. Hows that for irony?
Many of us are good at starting things its the finishing that we need help with.
The truth is, it might seem funny that my post on How to Finish sat unfinished for 7 days, but Im actually decent at finishing. I start a whole bunch of articles and books, and let those ideas germinate. When Im ready to focus on them, I get them to done pretty easily.
How? Many people wrote in to ask me to write a post called How to Finish after I wrote about How to Start. Reader Anthony Zullo, for example, asked:
You know when you get to the middle of a project, like a novel and start to lose motivation. Well, how do you develop that motivation after youre half way up the hill but not yet walking downhill yet?
I dont have all the answers, but Ill gladly share what works for me.
Motivation
For me, finishing is all about motivation. If youre having a difficult time finishing, its best to look closely at why you want to finish in the first place.
If the task or project isnt something you want to do, consider the consequences of dropping it. Ive done this often and its a relief when I finally drop something I didnt really want to do in the first place.
If you really do want to do the task/project, ask why. What do you get out of it? Do you love doing it? Is there some benefit youll get? Visualize that it might get you going.
If you need more motivation, find a way to give yourself some public accountability. Set a deadline, do a blog post, tweet about finishing. A little positive public pressure can be a good thing.
Get Moving
In my post, How to Start, I shared a tip for getting going:
Make it ridiculously easy to get started. Make the task so small, so easy, you cant say no make it just 1 minute long, for example, or even just 20 seconds.
Use the same tip for finishing: break your task into tiny little mini-steps, and just get started on each one by making them so easy you cant *not* do it. And keep doing that, repeatedly, until youre done.
Its that simple. If you cant write a whole chapter of your book or report, just write a paragraph or two. Take a walk around for a minute, then write another paragraph or two. Keep doing this until youre done.
Then go out and tell the world you finished. Its awesome.
Form a New Habit!
Im creating The Habit Course (with my friends Barry and Katie), and were looking for a few beta testers.
If youd like to test our simple method for creating habits, and youre willing to fill out a 1-minute report every day of the habit formation, please sign up for the Beta Test!
This Beta Test will be limited to the first 50 people who sign up. Everyone else will be put on a waiting list for when the course starts in May. We wont spam you.
