Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?

60 points by fizzyfizz 4 years ago | 31 comments

I'm not great at finishing projects at work.

I'm not great at finishing my own projects.

How can I get better at this? I've frustrated managers and even friends.

I've tried a lot of personal time management techniques.

I think I'm even good at identifying the critical steps forward for success. In group meetings, I'm lethal at cutting unnecessary work.

But somehow, when I go off by myself to actually do it, little gets done. Something in my brain seems to generate lots of complications to the tasks I am doing, and I lose enthusiasm and self-confidence.

I would pay for a coach, if they were familiar with this specific problem and not just general emotional support.

amirkdv 4 years ago |

I used to struggle with this a lot. Here are a few things that have really helped me over the past decade:

1. This is incredibly common. Some of the most productive people you know probably struggle(d) with this. And this is important to keep in mind because if you think "there's something strange and unique wrong with me" your brain will dismiss standard insights and tools.

2. Dysfunctional perfectionism is a procrastination tactic. And procrastination is a standard human coping mechanism for anxiety. These are hard facts even if they don't _feel_ real. The source of anxiety for most knowledge workers with their baisc needs satisfied is often this: the grandiosity of unrealistic dreams that have calcified as expectations. This messes with your self-esteem too

3. Echoing vesuvianvenus's comment on this thread ('scale back the dream, scale up the grind'), this Tim Minchin commencement speech [0,1] has stayed with me for years.

> I never really had one of these big dreams. And so I advocate passionate dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious. Put your head down and work with pride on whatever is in front of you… you never know where you might end up. Just be aware that the next worthy pursuit will probably appear in your periphery.

[0]: https://genius.com/Tim-minchin-commencement-speech-and-unive...

[1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=yoEezZD71sc

fizzyfizz 4 years ago | |

I like this. I do have large ambitions, swelling even as my daily achievements dwindle.

There could be a sort of vicious circle there. If you respond to short-term failure by putting more pressure on yourself to be outstanding, you end up being the sort of person who lives inside a dream of changing the world that they can never realize.

captain-phil 4 years ago |

In my opinion there’s only one way to deal with this - let’s say - procrastination. The problem is that you are at mercy of your feelings when you are supposed to sit down and actually do the tasks that you set yourself up for. Feelings of doubt and fear of not being good enough may kick in and your brain will come up with all kinds of ideas to release you from the situation.

For me, the following works:

1. Craft a day plan for yourself: it doesn’t have to be super-elaborate. Just sit down every evening and decide what tasks you want to work on tomorrow. Decide for how long approximately. You don’t have to plan when exactly you’re working on what. It’s more about what tasks and how long. Also take into account how much time you actually have.

2. Once you start your day, consider your plan as fixed. No ad-hoc changes. Your feelings will come. Be prepared. You cannot change today’s plan. That’s the rule.

3. Before you start: Break down your task into the simplest step you can take. E.g. when you want to write a blog post, start with brainstorming. If you wanna code, checkout the repo and have a look at the code.

4. Set a timer for 25 minutes and don’t allow yourself to do anything else. 25 minutes is manageable and you have the feeling you can do it. After 25 minutes you have started and probably it’s already fun to work on the task. Take a 5-minute break to do something fun (listen to music) and enjoy your “success”. Then do the next round.

Hope it helps.

We actually created an entire product around this because we needed it just like you.

Check it out if you like: https://daycaptain.com

However, you can do it on paper as well.

I’m also happy to help you as a coach. I’ve a lot of experience with these kind of things.

satvikpendem 4 years ago | |

Pretty neat, I came to the same conclusions and working on something similar here: https://getartemis.app

jvanderbot 4 years ago | |

this is pretty much exactly what I'd say. I do something similar and highly recommend all this.

vesuvianvenus 4 years ago |

Scale back the "dream" and scale up the "grind". And of course, modularize.

"If you have a big dream and a small grind, you'll never accomplish the dream. But if you have a small dream and a big dream, you're much more likely to get it done" -- Paraphrasing Dr. Eric Thomas. [1]

[1] "iGrind" by Dr. Eric Thomas -- Explanation beginning at approximately 1m:00s https://youtu.be/4iKJMDRXR6U?t=58

vesuvianvenus 4 years ago | |

Oops, I meant to say:

"But if you have a small dream and a *big grind*, you're much more likely to get it done"

_benj 4 years ago |

> Something in my brain seems to generate lots of complications to the tasks I am doing, and I lose enthusiasm and self-confidence.

Uff, I feel this so deeply!

I'm still struggling with this but I'm currently in working on a project that is the closest to done that I've ever been!

Recently I took at the book "Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done" (not affiliated, I just really liked it) and I certainly identify with a lot of what the author mentions, in summary, perfectionist masking as fear, as adding a bunch of extra steps to avoid finishing, and just plain the brain not wanting to use energy in difficult tasks and making anything else looks better than actually doing something to finish. I recommend it!

A few things that have worked for me:

- change of environment. I've super productive working from a local coffee shop

- prepare the space/materials for working. I'd open my editor, start the development servers and hibernate the computer before going to sleep so when I wake up everything is ready to start working

- separate "planning" from "doing". For me it feels like I need to use different brains, one to plan what to work on and another to just do stuff from a todo list. Separating the two has helped me a lot! When I used to plan and work at the same time, while working on a project I'd add A LOT of tiny unnecessary complications, go down useless rabbit-holes and waste time. Separating the two allows me to just open a todo list, get some focus music and just complete stuff.

Good luck!

hw-guy 4 years ago |

Sounds very familiar! I realized much, much too late in my career that I have ADHD; you might want to get checked for it (there are on-line self tests you can take first). I wasted many years underperforming in just the ways you've described.

fizzyfizz 4 years ago | |

I've been tested and I'm a borderline case. Not enough for a diagnosis.

brailsafe 4 years ago | |

What did you do about it?

hw-guy 4 years ago | | |

Once I concluded that I have ADHD, I made an appointment with a psychiatrist, although it's still about a month out. I expect he will put me on medication. Actually, it took me quite a while to get the appointment; many therapists have very long waits for new patients, or are not taking new patients at all. Supposedly has to do with mental health effects of COVID. Also, the ADHD itself made the whole process of selecting a therapist much more complicated and drawn-out than it should have been.

DwnVoteHoneyPot 4 years ago | | |

Andrew Huberman did a podcast on ADHD recently (available on youtube). Has some lifestyle recommendations that have helped me. I like his podcast because it's info dense and no BS.

almostdvs 4 years ago |

sounds like adhd. When it comes close to deadline time do you kick ass and then feel foolish at how easy everything was to complete?

DoingSomeThings 4 years ago | |

Not parent, but yes. This describes my life to a T. High successful when I actually do work, but constantly frustrated at the small % of my time actually operating at the high-level output.

fizzyfizz 4 years ago | |

sometimes

brailsafe 4 years ago |

I have zero advice for the parent, sorry, I very much struggle with these things too, and I think it's probably the fundamental challenge of execution in anything really.

You, and anyone who was initially attracted to this question because they feel they might have ADHD or struggle with the same things, might find the below question I previously asked useful. It got some traction and had some helpful anecdotes.

With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21716306

forgotmypw17 4 years ago |

What works for me is to have multiple projects going at the same time simultaneously, so that when I get tired of working on one, I can pick up and continue another one.

Eventually going back and forth like this, one will get finished, and that provides more motivation to keep going on the others.

Another helpful thing is to limit the scope and choose smaller projects which can then be expanded to another phase when they're "finished". This also helps with getting more "I just finished this" motivation boosts.

I also try to visualize and think about how it's going to feel when the project is already finished, which also helps me think about the goals, and why I am working on it in the first place.

Then there is the knowing when to quit. When I do this visualization and I find that the result is not just that interesting to me anymore, I may put the project on pause.

DwnVoteHoneyPot 4 years ago |

I haven't read the book myself yet (just bought it last week): https://www.amazon.com/Finish-Give-Yourself-Gift-Done-ebook/...

rvp-x 4 years ago |

I'd like to think I've been getting better at it. I find that I'm more familiar with what successfully finishing a task "feels like".

- doing the less appealing subtasks you've been putting off. it's objectively more difficult towards the end if you work this way.

- not treating "it works" as a finish line, remembering there might be more steps like code review, writing tests, and so on.

- avoid self-punishing comments like "I wanted to finish this on Friday and it's not done yet".

this often combines with the previous point - "I felt the task is done when it worked, but now I have to do all the tedious things like tests and I already declared it to be done on Friday!"

peanut_worm 4 years ago |

I remember some saying like “the last 10% of a project takes the same amount of time as the first 90%” and I think that is very true.

I like to have a set of specifications or goals for my project before I start or else I tend to keep adding features and it never gets finished.

eduardosasso 4 years ago |

Like others were saying just try to organize your project into atomic independent tasks that you can finish in a day or two, keep doing that consistently day after day and results will compound. Talking from personal experience.

convolvatron 4 years ago |

i'm the same way. as in almost the poster child.

one thing that I've found is to just give myself time to do cleanup. that includes making the code more readable, adding better handling for error paths, writing tests, documentation, etc.

i'm still not great, but at least some of those things get done. so when it comes time to try to release something, you can ignore the newest work and hopefully ship something useful with the rest.

usually when i sit down I only get joy out of pushing the functionality apex a little further. when this gets tiring, instead of posting semi-useful comments on HN, just spend 10 minutes making a little test or something.

truly 4 years ago |

Have you tried to limit the scope of the projects?

I think this is the #1 way to finish.

Once "finished", you can then iterate by adding features.

Time management techniques seem overrated to me for personal projects.

nicbou 4 years ago |

Get a smaller project to production. It's easier to increment on something that runs than to forever delay a perfect release.

codingclaws 4 years ago |

There is no finish. Get something easy working, then add commits. Making sure to work on the most important tasks.

tuckerpo 4 years ago |

Smaller tasks, series of small wins = more confidence, higher momentum, getting more stuff done.

gerardnico 4 years ago |

Just cut your work in smaller task and deliver them. The moral will go up instantaneously