Finish – Give Yourself the Gift of Done
By Jon Acuff
1/4/2018
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The exercises that caused people to increase their progress dramatically were those that took the pressure off, those that did away with the crippling perfectionism that caused people to quit their goals.
The less that people aimed for perfect, the more productive they became.
We tend to put too much emphasis on beginnings. In doing so, we miss the single day that wrecks more goals than any other: the day after perfect
They’d rather get a zero than a fifty. They believe perfect is the only standard and if they can’t hit it they won’t even take the first step.
Developing tolerance for imperfection is the key factor in turning chronic starters into consistent finishers.
Chronic starters quit the day after perfect.
Starting goals and never finishing them feels terrible. A goal is a promise to yourself. When you don’t reach it you break your promise. Break enough promises, you start to doubt yourself.
If you quit enough times, quitting is no longer just a possibility when you start a new goal, it’s your identity
Perfectionism magnifies your mistakes and minimizes your progress. It does not believe in incremental success.
Perfectionism portrays your goal as a house of cards. If one thing doesn’t go perfectly, the whole thing falls apart.
Cut Your Goal in Half
Story of his friend: was consistently going to the gym every day. Never did a triatholon. But decided to do something big. Decided to do a 70.3-mile Ironman. Had eight months to train, was already going to the gym every day. Put together a big, elaborate plan to train. Never went to the gym again.
The big audacious goal wrecked the consistent success he was already having! That’s how powerfully destructive a wrong-sized goal is.
Goals are a marathon, not a sprint.
If I can get you to do a little one month and win, you’re more likely to do a little more the next month and win even more.
Some goals are difficult to cut in half. For those, don’t cut them in half; give yourself more time.
Perfectionism will tell you it’s now or never, forever obsessed with the idea that if you don’t finish it now, you never will.
Choose What to Bomb
The only way to accomplish a new goal is to feed it your most valuable resource: time.
What we don’t like to admit is that you don’t just give time to something, you take it from something else.
Perfectionism’s third lie is: you can do it all. I’m here to tell you that you can’t.
The truly terrible part of trying too much: you don’t just drop the bonus item and carry on with your goal. You drop every ball you’re juggling when one gets out of sync.
When you can’t do it all, you feel ashamed and give up.
To avoid the shame trap, you need to decide ahead of time which activities in your life you can be bad at.
“Strategic incompetence”
In some cases (like email) choosing to ignore something means coming up with a system.
If you can’t think of something to bomb, I’ll give you a head start: social media.
Make It Fun If You Want It Done
We pursue goals we don’t like because: 1) We think goals have to be miserable 2) We believe perfectionism when it tells us that fun goals don’t count.
The crazy thing is that the aggressively nonfun approach doesn’t work. It might make you look good on Instagram as you impress your friends with your miserable grind, but scientifically speaking, joyless goals fail.
This is why some of the most outwardly successful people you know are some of the saddest. They crushed (performance success) but forgot (satisfaction) mattered too.
The common myth about high-level performance is that it must be grueling, painful and difficult. But the scientists researching elite swimmers found to their surprise that even at the 530 am practices, the swimmers “were lively, laughing, talking, enjoying themselves.”
The shortcut isn’t “find something fun”; the shortcut is “make it fun if you want it done.” You have to do the work of making it fun.
Fun comes in two very different flavors: 1) Reward motivation 2) Fear motivation
Avoidance motivation – people motivated this way are not trying to achieve a desired outcome, they are trying to prevent an undesired outcome.
If you’re motivated by fear, don’t fight it. Use it.
Fear is like fire.
Understanding what kind of fun moves you is important data to have.
You’ll never finish anything if you wait to be inspired. Pick which form of motivation you need the most and then add it to as many part of the project as possible.
Most people are not either/or motivated, there are some things they are motived by fear and some by reward.
Leave Your Hiding Places and Ignore Noble Obstacles
At the beginning of any goal, perfectionism focuses on destroying it with a full frontal attack. It tells you that if it isn’t perfect, you should quit.
If you hold on, if you refuse to allow perfectionism to denigrate your goal, it will completely change tactics. It will move from destruction to distraction.
The closer you get to finishing, the more interesting everything else in your life becomes.
Perfectionism offers two distinct distractions: 1) Hiding places 2) Noble obstacles.
A hiding place is an activity you focus on instead of your goal.
A noble obstacle is a virtuous-sounding reason for not working toward a finish.
A hiding place is safe – you go to hide from your fear of messing up. It’s the task that lets you get your perfectionism fix by making you feel successful even as you avoid your goal.
If you blink and find yourself working on something besides your real goal, you’ve probably retreated to an obvious time waster.
If you have a complicated, multistep explanation to say why what you’re doing is valuable, it probably isn’t.
The flip side is that some things aren’t distractions, they’re commitments.
Your corporate job, for instance, might not be something you love, but it’s not a hiding place, it’s a commitment. Giving that time and energy is what you should do.
Want to create a reward you really love? When new ideas or new goals get shiny, put them at the finish line. No other small business idea until you’ve completed the original one.
At the heart of it, a noble obstacle is an attempt to make your goal harder than it has to be so you don’t have to finish, but can still look respectable.
Avoid making things harder than they need to be (cut your goals in half!)
Until I get rid of distractions I can’t get anything done. If we believe we have to eliminate all distractions before we get work done, we never will.
You know you’re employed an “if…then” noble obstacle if you are only offering yourself two extreme options. There is no in-between, just two extremes. That’s the land of noble obstacles.
Instead of making things complicated and difficult, finishers stack the odds before they even start.
Finishers make things easier and simpler. Starters tend to go in the opposite direction, throwing garage-sale monkey wrenches into the process.
If you want it done, aim for simple.
1) Could things be easier? 2) Could things be simpler?
Start creating a list of “next goals” so you have a home for new ideas that come up.
Admit and eliminate any side goals that you’ve taken on.
Get Rid of Your Secret Rules
At the core, perfectionism is a desperate attempt to live up to impossible standards.
“If I’m not miserable, I’m not doing something productive.”
Many people struggle with a fear of success. The more successful they get, the guiltier they get, too.
If you’re not excited about your goal right now, ask yourself, “What’s my real goal?”
A very common secret rule is “what I’m naturally talented at doesn’t count.”
Is it time to quit?
How do you know if what you’re experiencing is genuine displeasure because you picked the wrong goal, or just normal frustration that comes with the middle part of a goal?
One of perfectionism’s favorite secret rules is “winners never quit.” Of course they do – people quit stupid things regularly.
In most goals, it’s not about winning all the time, it’s about winning more than you lose.
Getting rid of secret rules:
Ask the question “what does that mean?” for each secret rule you encounter.
Ask yourself “Who says?”
The third step to getting rid of a secret rule is to write a new rule to replace it.
Use Data to Celebrate Your Imperfect Progress
The funny thing about failure. It’s loud. Progress, on the other hand, is quiet. It whispers. Perfectionism screams failure and hides progress.
Without data, progress virtually disappears.
Remember, in the middle of a goal, perfectionism is trying to convince you that the results aren’t good enough and that you should quit.
Never play golf at night 🙂
The most troubling aspect of denial is that the only people we can’t recognize it in are ourselves. Spotting denial in other people is incredibly easy and often pretty satisfying.
It’s a lot more encouraging to look at where you’ve come from than where you’re headed when in the middle of a goal.
Once you’re 80 or 85 percent of the way done, it’s a different story. Seeing the final stretch can propel you.
Track things to help remind you of your progress.
Twenty three things you can track:
Time invested
Money earned
Products sold
Pounds lost
Inches
Garbage bags full of stuff
Books sold
Pages or words written
Miles run
Steps
E-mail subscribers
Followers on a social media platform
Meals made
Money saved
Debt paid off
Dates with a spouse
Prospects contacted
Hours slept
Thank-you notes mailed
New contacts
Bad food avoided
Books read
Hours of TV watched
Pick one to three things. Don’t overdo it. Perfectionism would have you measure thirty different things.
Why are people productive on planes:
You can only bring a limited amount of work
The white noise helps you focus
The Internet connection is too weak to get distracted
There’s a well-defined deadline
Nobody knows you
If you’re unhappy with your progess, you have three different dials you can adjust:
The goal
The timeline
The actions
Instead of beating yourself up, instead of misremembering how easy it was in the past, instead of quitting, look at the three dials.
The Day Before Done
Talent you don’t claim turns into bitterness eventually.
When you work with people who were stuck and then miraculously had a breakthrough, there are generally two reasons they did.
They had a life-altering experience.
The second way to make sure you finish. A friend.
We need friends during the entire goal, but they are most critical at the finish line.
“Every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story.” I love that idea and think it’s true of kids. I also believe it’s true of adults.
We don’t ever age out of needing someone to believe in us.
Here’s a question you’ve never asked yourself: “what am I getting out of not finishing?” Because you’re getting something.
Control over the outcome? Praise for being a martyr? Lowered expectations from other people?
Be honest with yourself. And if you find something, make the reward or fear motivation even bigger.
Goals you refuse to chase don’t disappear – they become ghosts that haunt you.