We all have a 90 % folder don't we? Whether that is a mental folder or one on your laptop. We all have a folder of projects that we ... never ... quite ... finis

This week's post is all about how you can actually finish the projects gathering mental and digital dust.

If you prefer your information in video form you can watch a version of this on my YouTube channel.

Why We Stall

There are three reasons why we don't finish what we start:

One: Fear of Judgment.

Unfinished work can still be anything. All of your brilliant ideas are still brilliant until you send them out into the world. Once they meet reality, well, maybe they are not as brilliant as you thought. Safer to keep it to yourself for another week. The fantasy version is nice.

Two: The Ambiguity of "Done".

If you own the goalposts, you can move the goalposts. And move them again. And again. When a project has no external scorer, you can keep adding things, refining things, changing things, improving things until, well, forever.

Three: The Pleasure of Open Options.

Before you finish a thing, there is still time to make it into a different thing, which is fun. It could be a maximal version, or a minimal version, a branded version or a white-label version. But once you choose a version, you kill all the other versions. And they are fun, perfect, full of potential in your imagination.

Note, some people suffer the opposite problem. Resistance to starting a project. If you would like to hear more about that let me know.

How to Fix This

So what are you going to do to overcome these problems? Don't worry, I have got you covered. Here are three suggestions:

One: Define Done in Advance.

Write down what constitutes finished before you begin. Try to be precise. If you do this in week 1 you create a target. Do it in week 12 and you are negotiating with yourself.

Before you start the next thing, write one sentence: "This is finished when ___."

Even if it is already week 12, it can be worth specifying what done looks like. Then see suggestion three.

Two: Ship Ugly.

The bar for your first version should be "this exists" not "this is good". Nothing worth creating was ever perfect on the first try. No book was written in one draft. Perfecting something before it exists is just a more sophisticated way of not finishing it.

So send, publish, or submit the version you're embarrassed by. Today. Before you'd normally allow it.

Three: The Two Week Rule.

Three things done properly beat nine half-finished. So make a commitment, the moment something crosses 90% it gets two weeks. Finished or killed. No third option.

Open-ended endings are where projects go to live forever without ever being alive.

So, look at your folder. Pick the one closest to done. Put a date on it (fourteen days from today) when it will be finished or binned.

Hope you find this useful. Let me know how you get on.

What I'm Working On

Everything in this post is a summarised version of a talk I gave to my clients in our regular group session on Friday. When we're together we're able to discuss these ideas, learn from and support one another.

This week the them is going to be How to Do Less. Most productivity advice makes you better at doing things that shouldn't be done at all. We're going to talk about how to get more done by doing fewer things.

If you want to find out more about my coaching, our group and how it might help you, hit the button below for a no-obligation conversation.