In this Guide, you will learn:

• NY How finishing a project is different from solving the problem you set out to solve.
• What role fear might play in limiting you from reaching your potential.
• What you stand to gain by seeing a project through to the end.

Finish your projects for long enough, and you’ll come to know a satisfaction that vanishingly few enjoy: a body of completed work spanning years or decades. What is it about finishing a project that’s so difficult? What makes the last 10% of a project take as much time as the first 90%? Every person and every project is unique, but two broad themes have continually come back to the surface for me:

• Finishing requires work
• Finishing requires courage

Let’s start with work.

The work of finishing:

You usually start a project with a big, singular thesis in mind: one thing you want to solve or one thing you’re trying to say. This is the core of the project; this is the big idea. So you set out to prove that single hypothesis. That’s the fun part! You know exactly what you’re trying to do, and there’s little consideration given to any of the surrounding concerns. It works on your machine, the error messages are cryptic, and it takes a magic incantation to run, but it works. That’s the blissful productivity stage. Once you’ve proven that the thing can work, you must start building all the scaffolding around it—all of the infrastructure to take it from proof of concept to a releasable project. It’s all the stuff you don’t really want to do, like writing documentation, setting up CI, properly handling user input, or figuring out how to correctly bundle the package for release. These aren’t the fun parts, or the things you set out to do in the first place, but these are the things that stand between you and the satisfaction of a finished project! A project that you’ve released to the world and can be proud of. There’s no way around it: Finishing a project takes a certain amount of pure, unpleasant work. The first step is to embrace the fact that it won’t be fun all the way through. You must become comfortable with the grind-it-out nature of the last 10% of a project. This is what separates people who finish from people who wish they could.

Starting a new project is a rush. The possibilities are infinite. There’s no legacy code dragging you down; we’re only making good decisions this time! The beginning of any project is always characterized by blissful productivity. There’s so much to be done. How could you not get a lot done in a short amount of time? Edge cases don’t exist. There are only happy paths. There are no hard decisions, no tradeoffs, no users, and no customers. Just you and an infinite canvas. Sooner or later, the blissful productivity gives way to something that feels much more like… work. More like a grind. But it’s probably just this project, right? You’ve lost interest. The passion is gone. It’s not as fun as you thought it would be. All that’s left is the “boring” stuff. You have a new idea, though, and you’re sure that you’ll see this one through! And so the cycle continues, over and over again, until you’re left with a graveyard of unfinished projects, wondering how anyone ever finishes anything. What does everyone else know that you don’t? Don’t worry, though, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re probably in the majority! Most people dream of doing great things, but many never start. Of the few that start, even fewer finish. Those few people—the ones that actually finish—know the deep satisfaction of seeing something through to the end. It’s a satisfaction much deeper than the euphoric high of starting.

The work of finishing:

You usually start a project with a big, singular thesis in mind: one thing you want to solve or one thing you’re trying to say. This is the core of the project; this is the big idea. So you set out to prove that single hypothesis. That’s the fun part! You know exactly what you’re trying to do, and there’s little consideration given to any of the surrounding concerns. It works on your machine, the error messages are cryptic, and it takes a magic incantation to run, but it works. That’s the blissful productivity stage. Once you’ve proven that the thing can work, you must start building all the scaffolding around it—all of the infrastructure to take it from proof of concept to a releasable project. It’s all the stuff you don’t really want to do, like writing documentation, setting up CI, properly handling user input, or figuring out how to correctly bundle the package for release. These aren’t the fun parts, or the things you set out to do in the first place, but these are the things that stand between you and the satisfaction of a finished project! A project that you’ve released to the world and can be proud of. There’s no way around it: Finishing a project takes a certain amount of pure, unpleasant work. The first step is to embrace the fact that it won’t be fun all the way through. You must become comfortable with the grind-it-out nature of the last 10% of a project. This is what separates people who finish from people who wish they could.