Photo by Peter Miller

Starters and Finishers

Writing has always been a challenge for me. I can sketch out essays and ideas, but honing it is always a struggle. With practice I’ve gotten better, but it’s still difficult.

James Van Dyne
Oct 26, 2016 · 3 min read

Throwing a ball 90+ miles per hour takes a lot out of you. That’s why it’s rare to see a pitcher pitch an entire game of baseball. The stamina required and risk of injury just isn’t worth it.

Some pitchers can throw “slow” fastballs for a long period of time. Others can throw “super-fast” fastballs for a short period of time. Alone, neither could finish a complete game. Instead they work together as a team.

The first pitcher will get you through most of the game, then around the 7th inning a “finisher” is brought in to close out the game.

Jacob, my co-Founder with Kwoosh, doesn’t publish much here on Building Kwoosh. It’s not that he can’t write. He just has trouble starting.

Getting the raw ideas out of his head into a first draft is a struggle. He starts and stops too much, focussing on the perfect sentence or word choice instead of a general outline.

What he’s great at is finishing.

He can take an outline that I’ve scrawled out at Starbucks over a flat white, reword some sentences, add in some sports metaphors, praise himself lavishly, and turn it into a finished essay.

He’s a finisher.

Last week I had an idea for a post, Fear vs Shipping. Left to my own devices it would have taken a week or more to get it written, and even then, it would have needed more work. Instead of struggling through it, I brought in my finisher.

I shared my draft with Jacob, and in an hour we had a published essay. Neither one of us could have posted the essay on our own, but as a team we could.

Identifying our roles has vastly improved our work. It means that my thoughts get written clearer and published sooner. And that I can lay the foundations for Jacob’s, before he comes back to construct them fully.

By focusing on our strengths we get more done.

I feel that a lot of makers fall into the same two categories of “starters” and “finishers”.

There are countless stories of people starting project after project and never finishing. Almost as many as the number who have great ideas, but procrastinate, and never get started.

If you can identify which category you fall into. You can either push through the part you know you struggle with. Knowing that it’s not your strong suit, and you just have to be determined to get through it. Or you can join forces with somebody to compliment your strengths and finish more perfect games (or projects).

We’re building our software project management tool Kwoosh in the same way. I throw together the basic elements, and Jacob refines and adds the polish. You can read more about what we’re doing in our publication, Building Kwoosh.

We’d both love to hear if you’re a starter or a finisher, so tweet us @kwoosh.

Building Kwoosh

Building Kwoosh

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