5 Reasons you never finish your projects
And tips to improve
1 You have too many projects
You have so many ideas that you are working on you never manage to finish one. Small amounts of work are completed on one idea after another but no significant progress is every made on one project. Set a short term goal for the one project and meet it.
This does not mean you can only ever have one project, over a period of time you can have many, but only focus on one at any given time prevents procrastinating for the sole reason you don’t know what to do.
2 You try to do large chunks in one go
It’s tempting to stay up all night working on a project. Yes you make significant progress over one night, but its bad for motivation. What ‘happens when you get busy, and you have to skip a weekend of code work? Suddenly you may have gone two weeks without working on your project, this makes it extremely difficult to get going again.
If you break your projects into bite sized chunks and take them on in small increments, it is motivating. Consistently you will begin to see progress on an on going basis, this will motivate you to keep pushing forward.
3 You don’t track your progress
Why do people weight themselves? Because seeing progress is motivating! To be constantly working on a project but never seeing paying attention to how far it has come, is an easy way lose track. Break your projects down into small attainable goals and meet them.
In a recent article I covered motivation and suggested a technique called ‘Don’t break the chain’ that encouraged breaking down the time you work on a project to small chunks of time per day. Marking these days off on a calender builds a chain of crosses, once you have a chain your goal is simply not to break it.
4 You start too big
If you have ever studied bootstrapping products, the concept of a minimum viable product would have come up. It is about getting the minimum required done for the product to function. This allows you to get feedback earlier on your project, and sets a more attainable goal.
Big targets are hard to reach, small targets are easy. Setting small targets prevents you from not working on a protect that overwhelms you with its shear scale.
5 You’re a perfectionist
Projects are never finished because their finish point is unattainable. Decide on what your minimum viable product is, set a date and meet it. Why does the most work always happen before a deadline? Why do you always procrastinate right until you have no choice but to finish the work? At the last minute your thought processes change, its no longer about building something perfect, its about getting it done. The solution is the same solution I have outlined all throughout this post, break your work and deadlines down into small milestones. This allows you to take advantage of the focus, and progress you get just before a deadline, but multiple times throughout a project.
Now think about your approach to your current projects and future projects, see if you can break them down to make them achievable!
Learn more about my thoughts and ideas at spencer-walden.com
