Finishing what you've started

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”

- Albert Einstein

Finishing what you start is of the upmost importance in life, it is how you are able to achieve your goals and mark progress in your life. This is something that I personally have struggled with, I often start something shiny and new, when I haven't finished what I am already committed to yet. This makes progress hard, because I am trying to do too many things at once and am spreading myself too thin to be able to meaningfully get work done. I know that I am not the only one to struggle with this, so I thought this would be good place to share what I have learnt when it comes to accomplishing goals and setting yourself up to succeed before and during your work.

Finishing what you start and doing what you say you will, gives you the power of evidence based confidence, & means that what you say and do matters. The problem is that there is always something newer or shinier that pulls your focus away from your current commitments. 

Starting a new project is fun and exciting but once you lose that initial honeymoon phase, it becomes a lot harder to do the work and bring something your working on to a close. By delaying commitment to new projects, you can build time to reflect on how valuable this new project is to you and make sure you have the time necessary to do it before you make a commitment. 

Not spreading yourself too thin might be the hardest lesson that I have learnt on this topic, because it requires saying no to things, and setting your current commitments on a higher priority.

 It takes knowing that if you want to do your best work, you cannot be spread too thin, doing too many things at once. If you take on too many things at once, you lose the ability to do those things to a standard you can be proud of.  It requires daily action on the few things you choose to spend your time and energy on. The belief in the work you are doing, that it will help others, that it will better yourself or ultimately be something that you can be proud of when it is finished. Sometimes that last step can be the hardest part, bringing something over the finish line so that you can present all your hard work. We can get stuck in something, and then not have the perseverance required to finish it. I myself have been victim of this a number of times. 

Making a commitment to yourself with a regular goal is a good way to practice this. whether it is something you do daily or something weekly, it helps to clarify your goals and give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done regularly. This also allows for natural breaks, if you hit your goal, you can take a break from the chaos as you appreciate what you have done and take a deep breath before you start going for the next rung on the ladder. 

As you hit these regular goals you are able to consistently show yourself your own progress. This will build confidence for the next time and will build respect for yourself as you show yourself that you are able to follow your commitments through consistently. This confidence and respect will stack, making it easier to do it again the next time. Soon enough you will be able to look back on a months work ( or several ) without regrets, and increased importance of missing the next milestone. For example, if you have hit the last 8 milestones in a row and you are losing motivation to hit the next one, you can think about the times you felt the same way and completed it anyways and how you overcame each goal, knowing that you can do it again. Breaking this consistency is a loss, and you know it. 

When you set manageable goals, they should be achievable regularly while not so difficult that they should take over other aspects of your life, you should have no excuses for missing your goal. Knowing this will keep things from getting too stressful and will ensure your commitment to yourself. 

Holding yourself accountable is how you can maintain your commitment and discipline. Something that helps in maintaining your accountability to your goals is by sharing them with someone you trust, to help keep you on track. Setting regular check-ins about your progress with a consequence if you don't meet your goals and a reward when you do will give even more incentives. Doing this in a way that is genuine, without the need to brag about your goals and achievements, helps strengthen your relationship with this person while increasing the likelihood that you will make consistent progress. Appreciation for their time and commitment that they are making to you to help you, will provide additional motivation for you to hit you your goals, because you do not want to let this person down. 

Building habits that make it easy to get your work done is the cornerstone of consistency. Carving out the time in your day to get focused work done is the best way to make progress not only easy, but inevitable. Looking at your time, schedule, and priorities to find time to do your work and make it a part of your routine lets you show up consistently and build a good rhythm to continue showing up. 

In order to make meaningful progress in our lives it means not just setting goals for yourself, but taking the steps necessary to achieve them as well. In order to set yourself up for success, You need to make clear goals, that include actionable steps to achieve them. There needs to be a balance in the difficulty of your goals, so that they are not so easy you get bored or lose your sense of accomplishment and not so difficult that your frustration grows to the point of quitting. 

Always remember that you are human, if you take on too much, make your goals too difficult, or overwork yourself you will stress yourself out too much to achieve your goals and will lose the enjoyment you get doing them. There will always be good days and bad days, times you make mistakes or miss your goals. The key is to not allow a bad day to stop you from trying, to show up consistently no matter what happened yesterday, and readjust when things go wrong or your goals are not manageable. Reflecting on what works and what doesn't, which circumstances allowed for success or failure in the past and learning from them.