Why we start things and don’t finish them

If you’re anything like a lot of my clients, you sometimes find yourself starting things and then not finishing them. 

Maybe you have a piece of artwork that has been staring at you for months, if not years, unfinished in the corner. 

Maybe you have a form that you need to fill out, that you haven’t got round to yet. (And you know it should have been done weeks or even months ago.)

Maybe you keep meaning to send a newsletter, and find you have all these ideas, but you don’t seem able to consolidate them and send the damn thing out. 

We all have different reasons for not finishing things, but in my experience, there are often a few common factors at play.

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1) We’re scared of not getting it right. 

This is a biggie. No one likes the thought of failing. No one likes the feeling of not being able to live up to what we think we could do, or create — if only we were better. If only we were perfect. 

It’s so often easier not to try. It’s easier to give up, or stop working before we get to the end — (where we realise we’re just as big a failure as we suspect ourselves to be).

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2) We’re often not sure what we’re trying to achieve. Or we don’t know what the end result should look like. 

This happens if we start a project and as we go on, it starts to look increasingly vague.

We end up getting lost and not knowing where we’re meant to be going. It’s a cliché, but it’s really hard to aim for a direction, if you don’t know what that direction is. 

This is where we can get lost in circles.

The thing is, getting lost is not necessarily 'the problem.'

We are always going to find that we come up against obstacles. We are going to find that our initial expectations don’t always match reality.

In anything with even the smallest hint of complexity, we are going to have to problem-solve. We are going to have to think things through and maybe go backwards and do things again.

However, what can happen is that if we stay 'too long' in this stage, we can begin to get disheartened. We can begin to doubt ourselves. 

To reiterate, it’s not the 'getting lost' that’s the problem. We can’t expect ourselves to know everything before we embark on a project. 

But when this happens, we need to be able to recognise it, and to give ourselves grace.

We need the ability to 'regroup' in our minds and give ourselves the space to think about what we really need. We need to create the conditions that help us make a decision and move forward with a degree of clarity.

The thing is, this is where we often get even more lost, and start to look to others for clarity.

This can sometimes be helpful — and sometimes it can be a mistake. Particularly if you start asking a lot of people for their opinions…

Ultimately, you are going to have to be clear on what you want to do next.

That clarity comes from within.

You may need to do research. You will need to do thinking. You may want to consult others and sound it out with them (so you’re not so stuck in your own head). But you are also going to need to listen to yourself, and trust yourself to move forward.

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3) The next step looks too big. 

This is related to my previous point, but if you find yourself having gotten to a stage and then feel like you can’t make the next step, it’s probably because the next step looks too big or it feels too unwieldy and ‘unknown’ to you. 

We can be really scared of the unknown. Many of us like to avoid it as much as possible. 

The unknown could kill us. (Says our brain.)

Why would we take such a risk?

Obviously, our rational mind knows that we’re probably not going to die if we send an email or complete an artwork. But what about the consequences after? What happens next?

What will people’s responses be? What kind of chain reaction of events might we set off??

These are the kinds of calculations that our very sensible brains make all the time. 

Here’s what I tend to advise in this situation:

You are going to have to learn to think 'smaller' and 'lighter.' This is not necessarily easy, but with practice, you can train your brain to focus less on the big, gigantic unknowns, and more on the 'here’s what I have to focus on now' unknowns.

If you imagine yourself looking at a giant 'to-do' pile — that literally looks like a mountain.

That mountain looks big, and scary, and insurmountable.

However, if you train your eyes to stop looking at the mountain, and bring them back to the path you are standing on in this very moment…

You now have a path.

You have ground to stand on. You have a way forward.

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Your brain is going to want to immediately go back to the mountain. That’s normal.

But you have to practise bringing it back to the here and now. That’s your job in this scenario.

Your brain wants to make everything important. (After all, they’re your thoughts — they must be important ;) ) However, we both know that sometimes, what our brain offers is complete rubbish.

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If you’re staring down the barrel of a project or a task that looks too big, I advise you to change your perspective. (This isn’t meant in a harsh way — but if the view you currently have is freaking you out, then usually it’s best to see if you can find a different view.)

i.e. If the next step looks too big, find the steps in between. 

If writing a whole blog post feels too much, you need to start with the first few sentences.

If creating a masterful piece of art sounds like too much, you need to lay out your materials and start to sketch.

If filling out the form feels too big, you need to open up the page with the form. You need to see the first screen of the form.

As much as possible, don’t think about the rest of the form/blog post/document. (Your brain will want to go there, but for this moment, pretend you have blinkers on. Imagine you have tunnel vision and all that you can see is this one screen.)

You don’t have to go any further. 

Now, take a moment to check what that feels like for you. 

Does it feel doable or not?

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PS. Sometimes we don’t finish something because we realise we don’t really want to go any further. That’s common and legitimate. You don’t need to second-guess yourself if you know something isn’t for you anymore. I wish we would celebrate 'not finishing' like this more often in public. So often we think that it’s a waste of time — we have wasted time — by starting something and not finishing it. However, often we have spent time learning something. Is that really wasted?

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When we’re struggling to complete something — and at least part of us wants to complete it — it’s often because we’re afraid of what happens when we get there and complete it; or we’ve lost motivation because the steps to get there look so big and vague and almost impossible. (And yes, often it’s both.)

Stating the obvious here, but it doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means your brain currently has some habits that are working against you.

(I would also like to say, those habits will be serving you in plenty of other ways — they are not, and never, inherently bad in themselves.)

The great thing about you and your brain, is that you can — and do — change. You can practise awareness. You can practise intention. You are able to learn new ways of being — where some habits are useful in certain contexts, and some habits can be changed and adapted for others.

It’s a long and fruitful road. You have time. Take the next step. 💛

Kathryn

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