I have a confession.
I don’t finish what I start.
Whew! It feels good to get that out. I can only imagine how much better I’ll feel once I rid myself of this terrible habit.
I have 45 partially written blog posts just hanging out in a Dropbox folder. Forty-five! That’s nearly 50 topics that I decided were good enough to start writing about but not important enough to finish.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that they’re not bad topics.
The posts are about things I identified as:
- Knowledge I have that you would find useful,
- Knowledge I wish I had that you might assist with and/or
- Topics we both want to understand better.
We can look at them as 45 missed opportunities for us to communicate. Forty-five times we could have learned something, if only I had enough drive to follow through.
I’ve been thinking about those 45 posts a lot. Those 45, and the five I’ve hand written that are sitting on my desk, and the who-knows-how-many others tucked away in journals.
I’ve been contemplating all of those missed opportunities… wasted efforts. I think about them each time I send another idea to my Instapaper or Evernote. I think about them every time I start to write a new post instead of finishing another one.
It’s time for me to make some decisions about those 45 posts. They’re either good enough to complete and share or they’re not.
If they’re important enough, I need to complete them.
If they’re not, I need to delete them so I can move on without guilt.
Ironically, it was a post I filed in Evernote that propelled me forward. The guest post by Ali Luke on Write To Done was for writers, specifically novel writers. It’s called How to Finish What You Start: A Five-Step Plan for Writers.
It may as well have been called “Hey, Kenna, Finish Your Crap.”
The step that resonated most with me was No. 1: Stop Starting New Projects.
Done.
After this post is complete, I will not start any new posts until I’ve either posted or vetoed all of my waiting posts.
What about you? What projects have you started that you’re leaving undone? What is your plan to finish them?
Let’s make a commitment together and keep one another accountable.
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