Why is it So Hard to Finish Things?

How to know when to start something new, and when to finish.

I care a lot about the projects that I am working on. I think you probably do as well. Why is it so hard to finish these projects, and why despite our best efforts are we so busy during our supposed down time. I’ve been thinking a lot more about this, and doing some “bad drawings” to help clarify why it keeps happening (I love and learned a lot from Math with Bad Drawings, and have found a much better question and 4 steps that I am using to help myself “finish better”.

The question I am using is “How can I get better at finishing well?”

The 4 key steps I am using are:

1. Taking the time to define ‘done’ for the project
2. Understanding that ‘done’ is most often a multi-step process.
3. Use the necessary slack time for the final steps as a “project learning dividend”.
4. Control the final number of iterations.

You can read more about it (and see the “bad drawings”) here.