And how to finish what you’ve started.
Why do I never finish anything? A valid question that has already kept me up a few too many nights.
To be fair, I do finish things from time to time. I even finished a (9 week!) course recently. But it’s not unlikely for me to drop a project long before it’s finished. And as I’ve been asking others about this too, it seems like I’m not the only one struggling with this habit.
To get as clear as possible on my situation, I asked myself two questions:
- Is it the project’s fault?
No. Because I like the projects. At first. It’s like I just lose interest overnight. It’s kind of psychopathic if you think about it. How could something that started out of passion or inspiration (a painting, a story, a habit) just get boring to me from one day to another? - Is it my fault?
Probably. But it’s not like I make a conscious decision to break off the project. It feels different than giving up — giving up feels more intentional than what this is. It’s more like… just stopping doing the thing.
To me, this just felt like a whole bunch of mystery. So I did some research.
What Do Scientists Say?
Research by Joseph Ferrari (what a badass name), professor of psychology at DePaul University and author of the book Still Procrastinating: The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done has found that there are generally three causes for this type of behavior:
1. Fear of being judged for our abilities
Basically, the idea behind this is that people would rather have their efforts judged than their ability. Truth is, we’re too scared to receive negative feedback from others. Putting in your best effort and then coming out with an underwhelming result makes us way to vulnerable for our liking. We’d rather have people judging our lack of effort.
2. Fear of setting the bar too high
This is an interesting one. Sometimes, rather than failure, it’s success that scares us. Imagine you’re baking a cake and it turns out so amazing that your friend asks you to bake their wedding too. That’s just way too much pressure. Do too good of a job on something and you might be judged against too high standards next time, whether it’s by yourself or by others. What if you can’t live up to those expectations?
3. Not wanting to end the fun
Ferrari also brings up the cause that if you’re enjoying the project, putting an end to it can be disappointing. (Personally I’ve never consciously done this I think but who knows!)
To be honest, I think a small part of it is laziness. Or scatteredness. Sometimes I can barely finish a book before I dive into the next one. Luckily, it seems like there are ways to fix it.
How to Finish What You’ve Started
From all the articles I’ve read on this topic, I’ve found that the most overarching solutions that were mentioned by people who have studied this topic carefully can be trimmed down to the following three principles.
1. Make sure you’re intrinsically motivated.
If you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing because you should be doing it (to get praise, status, others’ respect or money), then it’s not for you. That’s a sure thing. At least for me, I know that if I have to do something (i.e. work) but I don’t really care about it as much intrinsically, I’m much less likely to give it my best effort.
2. Know thyself — uncover patterns.
You won’t be able to fix your bad habits if you’re not aware of them. That’s why I’m writing this article in the first place — to get conscious about my flawed commitment habits. Something I’m doing now that is quite interesting (and confronting) is to list all the projects that I ever started, for as much as I can remember. How many did you finish? Why did you start all of them in the first place? What do the ones you finished have in common? Why did you stop the ones you didn’t finish?
3. Set goals consciously.
Now take this knowledge of your past projects and experiences and use them to set realistic goals for your next projects. Maybe you can even use this knowledge to filter out projects you’re thinking of starting. Which ones seem like previous projects you didn’t finish? Could it be because you don’t even really want to finish them in the first place? This could save you time that you could spend on the goals you actually intrinsically want to achieve.
Finally, I think something that weighs in heavily in my likelihood to finish something or not is whether I’m being realistic. If I set a goal to learn Spanish in a month I’m just setting myself up for failure.
Take baby steps, and you’ll be much more likely to get there.
‘’You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first steps.’’ — Martin Luther King Jr.
