What We Learn From Finishing What We Start

I am the queen of lists. But lately, my list has turned into five well-intentioned bullet points.

This practice of drilling down to the essentials has allowed me to direct more time toward the projects I value and also find the focus to finish them.

But sticking to my top five isn’t easy and it seems i’m not alone. Did you know that a staggering 92 percent of people that set New Year’s Goals never actually achieve them? That's according to research by the University of Scranton.

So, what do the remaining eight percent of goal-setters know about completion that we don’t?

Apparently, they are not just shortening their list of things to do, they are also making their goals more specific and challenging, but not too hard.   

I believe specificity is definitely important, but mindset matters, too!

For many of us, there is an emotional payoff for not finishing what we start.

When we don’t finish our projects, our art, or our screenplay, we never find out how good we are and how good we’re not. When we don’t finish things, or never start, we give ourself permission to live in a fantasy world of who we could be versus who we are right now.

When we don’t finish, we live in untested territory and risk becoming delusional by comparing ourselves to others who were brave enough to fulfill their own promise.

Sometimes nothing of significance happens in the outside world when we finish our work. No applause, award or reward other than knowing that we finished and honored the commitment we made to ourself. We earned our own trust.

Finishing allows us to separate the outer self from our inner self and understand that we’re good enough as a person, but the work isn’t there yet.

Finishing anything you care about is always a risk because it’s a blow to the ego when the work is not well received, or judged harshly. But, we need to know whether we’re good at something so that we know how to position its pursuit in our life. Is it a hobby, a career, a solo pursuit that simply brings us joy? What is our expectation? What do we want? Do we daydream about winning a Pulitzer Prize or an Oscar, but we’ve never written a word?

It takes courage to create and hard work to finish what we’re working on. And when there is no payoff in sight, know that your effort truly matters and the act of completing your goal gets you one step closer to truly making your mark.