Why You Need To Finish What You Start
Finishing has never been one of my strongest personal characteristics. In fact, on a lot of personality-type tests, I score quite low in the “finisher-completer” category.
But whilst knowing this can be quite off-putting, it’s actually served me well to know that finishing isn’t one of my strengths. Being made acutely aware of this “fault”, I now actively monitor my outputs to make sure that I’m not routinely falling just short of the finish line.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’m 100% disciplined in this area. In fact, there are times when I fall back into my natural ways, taking on more than I can effectively handle at any one time and then failing to deliver outputs in a consistent manner.
It’s not a great place to be, but the good thing is that awareness soon catches up with me and when it does, I immediately get back into a “finisher mindset” and start chugging through my tasks to bring them to completion.
You see the thing is that it’s kind of obvious, but in order to get anywhere in life, you have to make a point of finishing what you start and then getting it out there.
6 Reasons You’re Not A Strong Finisher
You Lose Interest
You could be full of enthusiasm at the start of your project. Coming up with great ideas and novel viewpoints that get other people excited too, because this is your particular personality strength.
Maybe you are an ideas person. There’s nothing wrong with that, after all, ideas have to come from somewhere, so why not you?
If you work with a team of people this might not be a problem, but if you work on your own or are tasked with a particular workstream, then the follow-through could be challenging for you because…
You Don’t Enjoy The Detailed Work
Whilst your ideas can be brilliant, working the plans and the details to turn the idea into a reality can be really challenging for you if you’re the type of person who doesn’t enjoy getting dirty with the detail.
Maybe details bore you and you’re only interested in the finished product (that someone else has worked into existence).
You Can’t See The Finish Line
Maybe once you’ve had the initial brilliant idea and get started you become overwhelmed with the size of the project ahead of you. There are so many details to think about, so many things to do and the horizon isn’t even visible.
You Have Too Much Work
Another aspect of overwhelm is that you already have too much on your plate anyway. Your many, many ideas have led to starting lots of projects but few, if any have come to fruition. Now you have a backlog of work to get through and this latest idea won’t even get off the ground because you feel completely swamped.
You Lose Faith In Your Idea
Once the initial excitement of your idea has worn off and you’ve started work on your project, you begin to think that it’s not good enough. You have doubts about whether it will actually work and who will be interested. As your doubts grow, your outputs diminish until you give up on the idea all together as a waste of time.
You’re A Perfectionist
“If a job’s worth doing right, it’s worth doing well” so the adage goes. But the problem for you is that because this is a new idea, you have no indication as to whether you’re going to be able to do it well, and if you can’t do it well, then you may as well not even start!
4 Benefits of Finishing What You Start
I’m obsessed with finishing as a skill. Over the years, I’ve realized that so many of the good things that have come my way are because I was able to finish what I started.
Derek Yu, Spelunky
So faced with your particular reasons for not completing your projects, consider the benefits below of finishing what you start and how these could give you an advantage.
You Learn By Finishing
When you first embark on a new project, you don’t have all the answers. This is completely natural, but the great thing about taking a project forward to completion is that you will learn what’s needed as you go along. But it’s only by finally completing the project that you fully understand what’s involved.
This knowledge and experience now forms part of your personal skillset which makes you more “valuable” to potential employers and boosts your CV/Resume.
You Will Be Seen As Someone Who Can Be Relied Upon To Deliver
If you routinely deliver on your ideas and projects then you become known as someone who can be relied upon to deliver, even on the tough stuff. That’s a skill that not everyone possesses and will see you progress quickly if you utilise it regularly.
Value Is Created At The Finish
No matter how long or how hard you work on something, if you never finish what you start, it has zero value to potential recipients. In other words, value is created at the finish, not the start.
If the report, new product, blog, new technical development or craft project is never finished and delivered, it’s of no value. Good intentions are only as good as the finished article.
It’s A Self-Actualising Skill
This is probably one of the most important aspects of finishing work that you start and encapsulates all the points above.
Every time you finish (and deliver) a project, you grow. You become more of the person you were, expanding your knowledge, skills, experience and achievements.
In doing so you are self-actualising. In other words, you are realising your potential and for every project you complete, that potential grows.
How Can I Use This Information?
So where are you right now? Surrounded by half-finished projects or focused and working through one thing at a time?
The chances are you’re somewhere in the middle with a few (maybe a lot) of projects and tasks in progress. This has probably left you feeling somewhat overwhelmed because you’ve been asked to do something else (or you’ve had another idea!).
Just Choose One Project To Finish
It can be hard when faced with lots of projects to know where to focus, but in the absence of any other driver, like a boss demanding a particular task be completed, just choose one project that you will focus on for a minimum of 30 minutes every day until it’s complete.
Applying your focus in this small way will allow for your usual day-to-day activities to happen while you make consistent progress towards finishing the first of many projects you may have started.
Don’t think about your other pending tasks and projects while you’re focused on finishing this single project. They’re turn will come after you’ve completed your chosen project.
Use this method consistently and you will finish what you start quicker than you imagine!
What to do next…
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