Always Finish: How to Achieve Goals (and Not Quit!)
“Where you start is not as important as where you finish.” — Zig Ziglar
Finishing is always more difficult than starting. In times of trouble, there’s every reason to quit and only one reason not to. Unfortunately, most people choose to give in.
You’ve heard the story: a person is struck by an idea, gets elated and inspired by it, and he starts working on it. For example, he’s built a business plan or sketched a few wireframes. Not long after, he’s starting to tackle some of the nitty-gritty, and his excitement is quickly dwindling. Then, he’s struck by a brilliant new idea. Why waste any more time on the old one?! He scrambles to get started working on the new one. As Mark Twain once said, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. Or as Behance founder Scott Belsky puts it, “This is why there are more half-written novels in the world than there are novels.”
“This is why there are more half-written novels in the world than there are novels.” (Click to Tweet.)
Belsky uses the concept of the Project Plateau, the phase that artists enter descend into and graveyard of many projects and startups around the world, to make sense of this behavior. Belsky describes the plateau as, “the point at which creative excitement wanes and the pain of deadlines and project management becomes extremely burdensome.” Naturally, the escape to spike excitement levels again is to let go of the current project and start a new project. This cyclical process often repeats itself endlessly, and as a result the artist or entrepreneur bears no fruit.
Your challenge is to keep moving until you finish your project. How can you do that?
Leverage Social Forces
Successful organizations use social forces to ensure that their members achieve their goals: for example, alcoholics anonymous uses it to keep members sober. Employees at companies like Google and Zynga set goals that can be viewed by all other members of the company to keep stay accountable to objectives and key results.
While there is a bit of brilliance in everyone, very few people are willing to finish what they started and ship it. Franz Kafka, one of history’s most influential writers, is one such example. When he died, he passed his writing on to a good friend, Max Brod, and instructed him to burn the work. Fortunately, for Kafka and future readers, Brod had the good sense to publish the work instead. He helped Kafka make a mark in history.
You may not be comfortable having a friend ship your work for you. That’s understandable. Instead of that, you can choose to make sure you finish by competing with a peer or against your past results. Alternatively, try committing to your goals publicly (if you’d like, use the hashtag #busybuildingthings). The embarrassment of not completing your goal could be a force that drives you to stick with it.
For those that want a more organized system, try goal tracker StickK. It’s a program that increases accountability to goals by enlisting the help of a referee (a friend, family member, or colleague). The service also gives you the option of sharing your goal with your friends. Additionally, you stake a certain amount of money on the program, and if you don’t complete your goals by your pre-set deadline, then StickK takes your money and donates it to the charity that you’d chosen. In case you start rationalizing your failure as a donation to charity, you can also donate to anti-charities: organizations you absolutely hate.
When you’re in doubt, think about these extremely successful folks that have made it as a result of their persistence. If you’re feeling down, try to match Elizabeth Jolley’s rejection rate (39 times a year, or 1 rejection every 1.3 weeks). Explore rejection therapy. Remind yourself that real artists ship. As Dropbox founder Drew Houston said to a graduating class at MIT, “Failure doesn’t matter. You only have to be right once.”
Plan Rewards
We are human. It’s time to start building that fact into our plans: instead of trying to endure through a tedious journey, build rewards into the path.
According to 99U, Google Labs’ Creative Director Ji Lee uses games in order to add elements of fun throughout the project. Similarly, add challenges, levels, rewards, and other gaming characteristics into your project in order to trick yourself into staying loyal and remaining engaged with. For example, if you use tracker software or to-do lists, reward yourself after reaching a certain velocity of tasks for the day.
Rather than simply rewarding yourself when the task is complete or when the goal is achieved, reward yourself for milestones and performance as well. In addition to joy, fun, and various other positive emotions as rewards, motivation is a specific type of fuel that feeds execution. As B.J. Fogg, founder of Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, explains in his behavior model, motivation resembles a temporary fuel that enables people to do extraordinary things.
B.J. identifies three core motivators as sensation (pleasure/pain), anticipation (hope/fear), and social cohesion (acceptance/rejection). Make the most of anticipation by increasing your hope, through inspiration and motivation. As a reward, set up a plan to meet up with a mentor and discuss your progress (pleasure/pain). Show your work to someone you admire (hope/fear). Attend a conference where your heroes are speaking and demonstrate your project to the folks you meet along the way (acceptance/rejection).
“Where you start is not as important as where you finish.” — Zig Ziglar (Click to Tweet)
Use Constraints to Shorten Project Plateau
Remember the project plateau, the permanent resting place of many semi-written novels, design wireframes, and other half-pregnant ideas? It’s imperative to bear your way through this phase. In order to increase your chances, shorten the project plateau and the amount of time you will need to endure through it. In other words, create constraints.
Constraints can come in the form of a deadline. As Nest co-founder and CEO Tony Fadell explained at a 99U conference suggests, a deadline can be the constraint: “You must ship (preferably within a year). As creators, there’s nothing more discouraging than projects that dead-end or fizzle out. Tony Faddell argued that you can only keep your team motivated for so long before morale suffers. Ultimately, we and our teams need to see tangible results in the world — something we can point to and say “I made that” — in order to maintain the energy and passion necessary to create great things.”
Weekly sprints, used in agile development, helps artificially create the constraint so that developers get as much as possible done within a workweek. As Charles DuHigg writes in his book The Power of Habit:
“Small wins are exactly what they sound like. “Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage,” one Cornell professor wrote in 1984. “Once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win.” Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.”
Time isn’t the only constraint you can set for a small win. You can also add constraints to your project by determining a clear-cut budget, or setting very clear milestones and objectives to meet along your timeline.
“We are judged by what we finish, not what we start.” — Unknown (Click to Tweet.)
Closing Thoughts
“We are judged by what we finish, not what we start.” Take responsibility for completing your work and sharing it with the world. Do whatever it takes — leverage social forces, plan rewards, and use constraints to shorten the project plateau hell you have to endure through — whatever you do, just finish and ship. One complete project is better than a million half-baked ones.
Stay inspired with some art blocks from Busy Building Things. Or, join the discussion and have the Twitterverse keep you accountable to your goals with the hashtag #busybuildingthings.
Inspiration is a fuel, a temporary ability to do extraordinary things. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Shopify renew their inspiration by using our art products. Get busy building things.
This post was written by Herbert Lui and edited by Robleh Jama.
