How to Actually Finish Things
At one point I counted. Fourteen unfinished projects in various drawers, drives, and corners of the garage. A course three-quarters built. A manuscript. A rental property plan. Two business ideas with logos but no customers. I was, by any honest measure, excellent at starting.
Starting feels like progress because it comes with a hit of possibility. Finishing feels like work because that’s what it is. The gap between the two is where most people’s potential quietly leaks away.
Define done before you begin
Half my unfinished projects had no finish line. “Build a course” isn’t a destination; it’s a direction. Without a clear picture of done, you can work forever and never arrive, and eventually you drift away because there’s nothing to arrive at.
Now, before I start anything, I write one sentence: this is finished when. The course is finished when six lessons are recorded and uploaded. The book is finished when the file is sent to the printer. If I can’t write the sentence, I’m not ready to start.
Cut scope, not corners
Nearly every project I finished got smaller along the way. Not worse. Smaller. The course went from twelve lessons to six. The first version of the book was long and the final one was tighter. Finishing a small thing teaches you more than abandoning a big one, and the small thing can grow later. The big thing in the drawer teaches you nothing.
The ugly middle
Every project has a stretch where the excitement’s gone and the end isn’t visible. This is where things die. The only thing that gets me through it is treating it as expected. Not a sign I picked wrong. Just the part of the road that’s always there. I set a daily minimum, usually small, and I do it without consulting my feelings about the project. Feelings return around the time the end comes into view.
One at a time
This one hurt. I had to choose one project and officially shelve the rest. Not abandon. Shelve, with a date to revisit. Working on four things at once meant finishing none. Working on one meant finishing it in a quarter of the time I’d have guessed, because all the energy I’d spent switching between them went into moving one forward.
Ship it before it’s ready
If you wait for ready, you’ll never ship, because ready is a feeling and the feeling doesn’t come. Ship when it meets the done sentence. Fix what’s wrong in version two. Everything I’ve ever put out had something in it I’d have changed with more time. Nobody noticed except me.
What finishing gives you
Besides the thing itself, it gives you evidence. The next project is easier because you know you’re a person who finishes. That identity is worth more than any single project, and you can only buy it one way.
This week
Pick the project closest to done. Write its done sentence. Cut whatever you can cut. Then give it the first hour of every day until the sentence is true.
Launch list
Be there on day one.
One email when the book opens on Kickstarter. Nothing else. Already reading the book? Your Cheat Sheet is at wisdomdeck.com/free.
Coming soon on 
The book itself — 40 laws in ten parts, 320 pages, each ending with The Work — is funded first on Kickstarter.
