I'm not great at finishing my own projects.
How can I get better at this? I've frustrated managers and even friends.
I've tried a lot of personal time management techniques.
I think I'm even good at identifying the critical steps forward for success. In group meetings, I'm lethal at cutting unnecessary work.
But somehow, when I go off by myself to actually do it, little gets done. Something in my brain seems to generate lots of complications to the tasks I am doing, and I lose enthusiasm and self-confidence.
I would pay for a coach, if they were familiar with this specific problem and not just general emotional support.
1. This is incredibly common. Some of the most productive people you know probably struggle(d) with this. And this is important to keep in mind because if you think "there's something strange and unique wrong with me" your brain will dismiss standard insights and tools.
2. Dysfunctional perfectionism is a procrastination tactic. And procrastination is a standard human coping mechanism for anxiety. These are hard facts even if they don't _feel_ real. The source of anxiety for most knowledge workers with their baisc needs satisfied is often this: the grandiosity of unrealistic dreams that have calcified as expectations. This messes with your self-esteem too
3. Echoing vesuvianvenus's comment on this thread ('scale back the dream, scale up the grind'), this Tim Minchin commencement speech [0,1] has stayed with me for years.
> I never really had one of these big dreams. And so I advocate passionate dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious. Put your head down and work with pride on whatever is in front of you… you never know where you might end up. Just be aware that the next worthy pursuit will probably appear in your periphery.
[0]: https://genius.com/Tim-minchin-commencement-speech-and-unive...
There could be a sort of vicious circle there. If you respond to short-term failure by putting more pressure on yourself to be outstanding, you end up being the sort of person who lives inside a dream of changing the world that they can never realize.
For me, the following works:
1. Craft a day plan for yourself: it doesn’t have to be super-elaborate. Just sit down every evening and decide what tasks you want to work on tomorrow. Decide for how long approximately. You don’t have to plan when exactly you’re working on what. It’s more about what tasks and how long. Also take into account how much time you actually have.
2. Once you start your day, consider your plan as fixed. No ad-hoc changes. Your feelings will come. Be prepared. You cannot change today’s plan. That’s the rule.
3. Before you start: Break down your task into the simplest step you can take. E.g. when you want to write a blog post, start with brainstorming. If you wanna code, checkout the repo and have a look at the code.
4. Set a timer for 25 minutes and don’t allow yourself to do anything else. 25 minutes is manageable and you have the feeling you can do it. After 25 minutes you have started and probably it’s already fun to work on the task. Take a 5-minute break to do something fun (listen to music) and enjoy your “success”. Then do the next round.
Hope it helps.
We actually created an entire product around this because we needed it just like you.
Check it out if you like: https://daycaptain.com
However, you can do it on paper as well.
I’m also happy to help you as a coach. I’ve a lot of experience with these kind of things.
"If you have a big dream and a small grind, you'll never accomplish the dream. But if you have a small dream and a big dream, you're much more likely to get it done" -- Paraphrasing Dr. Eric Thomas. [1]
[1] "iGrind" by Dr. Eric Thomas -- Explanation beginning at approximately 1m:00s https://youtu.be/4iKJMDRXR6U?t=58
"But if you have a small dream and a *big grind*, you're much more likely to get it done"
Uff, I feel this so deeply!
I'm still struggling with this but I'm currently in working on a project that is the closest to done that I've ever been!
Recently I took at the book "Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done" (not affiliated, I just really liked it) and I certainly identify with a lot of what the author mentions, in summary, perfectionist masking as fear, as adding a bunch of extra steps to avoid finishing, and just plain the brain not wanting to use energy in difficult tasks and making anything else looks better than actually doing something to finish. I recommend it!
A few things that have worked for me:
- change of environment. I've super productive working from a local coffee shop
- prepare the space/materials for working. I'd open my editor, start the development servers and hibernate the computer before going to sleep so when I wake up everything is ready to start working
- separate "planning" from "doing". For me it feels like I need to use different brains, one to plan what to work on and another to just do stuff from a todo list. Separating the two has helped me a lot! When I used to plan and work at the same time, while working on a project I'd add A LOT of tiny unnecessary complications, go down useless rabbit-holes and waste time. Separating the two allows me to just open a todo list, get some focus music and just complete stuff.
Good luck!
You, and anyone who was initially attracted to this question because they feel they might have ADHD or struggle with the same things, might find the below question I previously asked useful. It got some traction and had some helpful anecdotes.
With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21716306
Eventually going back and forth like this, one will get finished, and that provides more motivation to keep going on the others.
Another helpful thing is to limit the scope and choose smaller projects which can then be expanded to another phase when they're "finished". This also helps with getting more "I just finished this" motivation boosts.
I also try to visualize and think about how it's going to feel when the project is already finished, which also helps me think about the goals, and why I am working on it in the first place.
Then there is the knowing when to quit. When I do this visualization and I find that the result is not just that interesting to me anymore, I may put the project on pause.
- doing the less appealing subtasks you've been putting off. it's objectively more difficult towards the end if you work this way.
- not treating "it works" as a finish line, remembering there might be more steps like code review, writing tests, and so on.
- avoid self-punishing comments like "I wanted to finish this on Friday and it's not done yet".
this often combines with the previous point - "I felt the task is done when it worked, but now I have to do all the tedious things like tests and I already declared it to be done on Friday!"
I like to have a set of specifications or goals for my project before I start or else I tend to keep adding features and it never gets finished.
one thing that I've found is to just give myself time to do cleanup. that includes making the code more readable, adding better handling for error paths, writing tests, documentation, etc.
i'm still not great, but at least some of those things get done. so when it comes time to try to release something, you can ignore the newest work and hopefully ship something useful with the rest.
usually when i sit down I only get joy out of pushing the functionality apex a little further. when this gets tiring, instead of posting semi-useful comments on HN, just spend 10 minutes making a little test or something.
I think this is the #1 way to finish.
Once "finished", you can then iterate by adding features.
Time management techniques seem overrated to me for personal projects.
