The Job Isn’t Finished Until It’s Finished
Starting a job vs. finishing a job. These go hand in hand but have different levels of difficulty in terms of accomplishing them. On one hand, you may think that getting started is the most important thing for any idea to get off the ground. You wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. Getting the ball rolling is important and every great thing starts with a first step. But, the first step is often the easiest and easy soon gives way to hard. The hard part is finishing what you started. Doing a new project can be both exciting and motivating so why is it so hard to finish?
Motivation gets us moving, it charges us up in ways that we normally don’t feel. It’s a factor in everything we do. Motivation to get out of bed, to make breakfast, to get to work, to exercise – without it, we’re not doing any of these things. When we’re motivated to take action we do the things we are meant to do. However, this is also a fleeting feeling. For the things that aren’t in our normal routine, we may be motivated to act but once that feeling disappears we are suddenly not as willing to keep up with that task. As everyone knows, this is quite common. Doing anything requires energy and our bodies and mind aren’t always willing to spend it. So where can we get the energy to keep up with a task?
Our biggest obstacles and motivation blockers are distractions and lack of direction. Both feed off of one another and go hand-in-hand to derail us from our tasks. Distractions are everywhere – FOMO with whatever our friends are doing, the phones in our hands, the shows on tv – the list goes on. Our brains are wired to want to know what’s going on around us and all of these things are calling out to our brains “PLEASE COME CHECK US OUT”. They are hard to ignore. We will check our phones numerous times a day, all while telling ourselves that it’s just a quick look so what’s the harm in it? Well, a quick look 20 times a day adds up and soon we’ve spent more time on the distractions around us rather than the task at hand.
Directions, or a lack thereof, are the feeding force behind our brains wanting to check out the new shiny object next to us. Earlier when it was mentioned that getting started is often the easiest step of any process, this is because when there is everything to do and it’s clear to you what needs to happen first our direction is obvious – do task #1. The problem is when you get to task #10, or #35, or #100, and the task itself gets harder, how do you go about accomplishing this step? The earlier steps were so easy to complete, but now? It requires some real thinking and action. We might get hung up on a problem and lack the clarity to solve it and it’s at this point our minds can start to wander. This is a problem and leads us straight to the distractions we wish to avoid.
The way to solve the distractions problem is to first solve the directions problem. A lack of clarity on your plan creates a void for attention and that’s where the distractions fill the void. Avoid this by making sure your plan is crystal clear. While every plan is nuanced, the general guidelines to create clarity in that plan are as follows:
1. Determine your end goal. Every plan should have a finish line. Make sure it’s clear what it is you are setting out to do.
2. Find out what resources are needed. Determine if you can get this done alone or if you’ll need outside help. When getting your plan together, be honest with yourself on what you can and can’t do, and which of tasks that you can’t need to be outsourced.
3. Get an idea of your timeline to completion. Giving yourself a deadline helps you move the tasks along. This is important but not easy to do. Plans can get sidetracked and your timeline thrown off. It’s critical that you stay on the timeline as close as possible.
4. Get started. Planning can go a long way but don’t let it hold up your project. You won’t always know everything you need to about a task until you actually get underway and analysis paralysis won’t help. Getting started gets the ball rolling in the right direction.
5. For any problems that come up, repeat these steps to overcome them. Many times you’ll come across a problem that is tough to solve. Break down the problem by repeating these steps to solve it. Most problems are solvable, we just don’t know how to approach many of them.
Implementing these steps to any project helps to organize your action steps and gets you moving in the right direction. However, it’s important to keep in mind that this is simply a guideline and that the biggest obstacle remains motivation to keep going. The problem with planning is we can lose sight of the end of the line. The end of the line is the reason you got started on your endeavor in the first place, so why wouldn’t you keep going until it’s finished?
Our minds, for better or worse, can go on auto-pilot and we lose our focus. When we’re in a project and start to see the finish line, many times our minds will tell us that we’ve made it to the end and that the task is done. Our minds say we’re done while the body never finishes what we started. You must resist this tempting thought. Remember that no matter what the project you started is not finished until you cross the finish line, not when see the finish line. Not doing so leads to procrastination and bad habits – actual detractors that are harmful to your goal. Do not relent until you have finished what you set out to do. You will thank yourself later.
