Smaller tasks, series of small wins = more confidence, higher momentum, getting more stuff done.
Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?
11–20 of 33 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?
#12Sounds 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.
What did you do about it?
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.
Re: Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?
#13i'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.
Re: Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?
#14I 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...
Re: Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?
#15sounds like adhd. When it comes close to deadline time do you kick ass and then feel foolish at how easy everything was to complete?
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.
Re: Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?
#16I'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!"
Re: Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?
#17What 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.
Re: Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?
#18I 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.
Re: Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?
#19Re: Ask HN: How to Get Better at Finishing?
#20Get a smaller project to production. It's easier to increment on something that runs than to forever delay a perfect release.