Adding Parentheses

[Starting & Finishing - I]

You’ve seen the meme, I’m sure of it. It’s usually two images. The first says START and FINISH and between them is a straight line. It might include a caption, “What I thought life/success/work/goals/projects looked like". The second image says START and FINISH and between them is a squiggly line, and it includes a caption, “What life/success/work/goals/projects actually looks like”.

It’s never a straight path.
Success is full of surprises and failures.
It always looks more like a knotted ball of yarn.

I’d like to add one thing to the second image, since the point of the meme is to correct a common misunderstanding about the path of real life. I’d like to put FINISH in parentheses (FINISH).

Starting is hard. Finishing is 10X harder. It’s so much harder that is rarely happens. It seems optional. Unexpected. Even theoretical.

It seems everyone has started a company, launched a new thing, made a new goal or New Year’s resolution, or started a grand project. Kuddos to them. Starting is hard. It really is. But how many people have finished, shipped, sent, and delivered on that thing? Finishing is at least 10X harder.

I’ve been working on my current book for three years! My chest is touching the finish tape, but I haven’t broken through. At this point I could trip and finish, but even ten yards back, it wasn’t guaranteed. Finishing is NEVER guaranteed!

There’s so much we get wrong about starting and finishing. And it hurts our chances of both.

The first thing is to put parentheses around the idea of (FINISH)ing. It’s not guaranteed and it’s the hardest part. Now, let’s get to work on how to increase our chances.

The next couple weeks I’ll be reflecting on Starting & Finishing.
See you tomorrow morning, friends.