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“I’ve never had a problem starting. I’ve started a million things, but I never finish them. How do I finish?”
I’ve only completed 10 percent of the books I own. It
But though 100 percent start, only 8 percent finish.
Statistically you’ve got the same shot at getting into Juilliard to become a ballerina as you do at finishing your goals. Their acceptance rate is about 8 percent, tiny dancer.
Angela Duckworth’s excellent “Grit Scale.”
The less that people aimed for perfect, the more productive they became.
If you want to finish, you’ve got to do all that you can to get rid of your perfectionism right out of the gate. You’ve got to have fun, cut your goal in half, choose what things you’ll bomb, and a few other actions you won’t see coming at first.
most of them will feel like shortcuts.
Refusing to keep ice cream in your house when you’re trying to lose weight is a shortcut.
“Might as well” is one of the most dangerous phrases in the English language.
“Might as well” is never applied to good things. It’s never, “Might as well help all these orphans,” or “Might as well plant something healthy in this community garden.” It’s usually the white flag of surrender. “I’ve had a single French fry, might as well eat a thousand.”
Imperfection is fast, and when it arrives we usually quit. That’s why the day after perfect is so important. This is the make-or-break day for every goal. This is the day after you skipped the jog. This is the day after you failed to get up early. This is the day after you decided the serving size for a whole box of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is one. The day after perfect is what separates finishers from starters.
Accomplishing a goal is a lot less like taking a train across country and a lot more like driving a bumper car.
track without a single impediment. Nothing will stand in your way, and for a few brief moments that bumper car will actually feel fast. On other days, some completely unforeseen, impossible-to-account-for situation is going to slam into your side. Or you’ll get locked into a really annoying
Bumper car analysis
The opposite is finished.
Those are the doors we stand before in this book and in our lives. One is marked FINISHED and leads to untold adventures, opportunities, and stories. One is marked PERFECTIONISM and leads to a solid brick wall of frustration, shame, and incomplete hopes.
The worst part of this whole situation is that starting goals and never complet...
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When you don’t finish it, you’ve broken that promise. You’ve lied to the person you spend the most time with. You.
If you break enough promises, you start to doubt yourself. This is not surprising.
People remember uncompleted goals better than completed ones.
finishing something you care about is the best feeling in the world.
Starting definitely delivers a momentary burst of euphoria, but it’s nothing in comparison to the real finish. You’ll keep the medal you received when you finished your first 5K.
small or big, the size of the finish doesn’t matter. You finished and that’s an amazing feeling.
The problem is that perfectionism magnifies your mistakes and minimizes your progress. It does not believe in incremental success. Perfectionism portrays your goal as a house of cards. If one thing doesn’t go perfectly, the whole thing falls apart. The smallest misstep means the entire goal is ruined.
Perfectionism also messes us up by making u...
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We don’t want small growth. We want massive, overnight success.
The best part is most of the time all that I mentioned above is mental. I never actually started anything.”
dream cracker you were supposed to eat as a way to accomplish your goal.
In the middle of a goal, perfectionism gets real chatty.
If you are going to do something, shouldn’t it be amazing? Shouldn’t it be larger than life? Go big or go home!
We’ve now bumped into the second lie of perfectionism: Your goal should be bigger.
That’s a fun sentiment, and the bigger the goal, the bigger the...
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Those two approaches, cutting the goal in half or doubling the timeline, can be applied to most goals.
Ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Think back to other goals you’ve attempted. Were they too big? Write down what happened.
Write down a number associated with your goal. (It’s difficult to cut a feeling in half.) Will you read ten books? Declutter four rooms? Lose twenty pounds? Make five thousand dollars?
Decide whether you can cut your goal in half or dou...
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Share your goal with someone you trust and ask him if...
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If you’re uncomfortable with cutting your goal in half, spend a few minutes answering the question “What’...
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The only way to accomplish a new goal is to feed it your most valuable resource: time. And what we never like to admit is that you don’t just give time to something, you take it from something else. To be good at one thing you have to be bad at something else.
The easiest way to deal with people in these situations is to say the most powerful word in the English language: No.
Just say no. No long explanation. No apology. No justification. No.
Like a tiger about to strike,
“make it fun if you want it done.”
We never start our volunteer work by saying, “What’s something I really enjoy doing that I could use to serve someone?” And more often than not, we give up on giving back.
I can’t relax in the Jacuzzi without doing something productive first. Pavlov would be proud.”
Want to create a reward you really love? When new ideas or new goals get shiny, put them at the finish line. Don’t try to grow callous to the shiny objects; if anything, let them gleam. Let them be brighter than the noonday sun. Just make sure they point the way to the finish line. No podcast until the book is done. No other diet until you’ve finished the one you already committed to.
No other small business idea until you’ve completed the original one. Line your finish line with the dream goals you’re currently using as hiding places and then watch how fast you’ll run toward it.
how often are our worries rational?
Instead of making things complicated and difficult, instead of giving in to noble obstacles, finishers stack the odds before they even start.
