Hollins - Finish what you start : the art of following through, taking action, executing, & self-discipline

Esther has thought about it a million times. Stuck in a dead-end desk job for the last six years, she has fantasized about not having to deal with the monotony of paperwork, not having to report to a demanding boss, and not having to leave her two-year-old son at the daycare center every day.

And exactly how were such fantasies supposed to be realized when she had to earn a living to make ends meet for her family? She had the answer: she figured shed start her own baking business right at home.

It was all just a fantasy, a thought shed conjure to get her through difficult days at work. But one day, something felt different. For some reason, she finally decidedshes going for it. After all, baking was her one true passion. For years, shed been baking cakes and cookies for her friends, who all said she should think of turning it into a business, so maybe it wasnt such a bad idea, right?

So began Esthers quest to open her baking business. She didnt quit her job just yet but filed for a two-week vacation leave to start testing the waters. First , she thought, research . She figured that she needed to get this business thing all figured out in her head first, before she took any further step forward. The more prepared and planned she was, the better. She intended to research everything there is to know about starting such a venture, from recipes to finance management. She also planned to survey her friends and the entire neighborhood to get a feel of the market needs. It was all starting to take shape in her head.

Unfortunately, whatever took shape in Esthers head stayed there and never found its way out.

The thought of having to learn everything about how to start and run a baking business from scratch overwhelmed Esther so much that she was paralyzed from taking any action in that direction. Taxes, business filings, leases? All she wanted to do was bake!

When her vacation days started, she always found things to do other than what she had initially planned. She spent her days sleeping in, doting on her son, busying herself with home projects, and catching up with her friends and neighborsand not even to ask them for marketing input. She was too worried that if she started telling people about wanting to start a business they might think she was too ambitious for her level of talent, expect her to fail, or, worse, expect her to succeed. She couldnt deal with the idea of expectations hanging over her head.

Two weeks thus came and went, and all Esther managed to do was put the vacation in vacation leave. As she headed back to work, the thought of running her own baking business kept on replaying in her head, still more a fantasy than a plan. She had a feeling shed continue to think about it, several million times more.

What Is Following Through?

What do you suppose went wrong in Esthers situation? Did she lack focus? Self-discipline? Action? Persistence?

If you say she lacked all of the above, youre pointing to actually just one concept: following through.

Following through is related to focus, self-discipline, action, and persistence, but it is not synonymous to any of them. Rather, it is a composite of all of thema bit like how those big Japanese anime robots come to be formed by the fusion of smaller individual robot parts. Power Rangers , or Voltron , to be specific. And much like how each smaller robot forms a different body part in the big robot, so too does each of these four elementsfocus, self-discipline, action, and persistencecorrespond to a body part that, when pieced with the others, forms the whole of following through.

The head: focus. Following through involves having focus. Its akin to the head because it is focus that keeps your head in the game and your eyes on the prize. Focus guides your thoughts in figuring out how to follow through and directs your actions toward achieving your vision. See, following through is not just about exerting effort; its about exerting effort thats concentrated on a single goal. With focus, no effort is wasted. Whats followed is a single line of sight, so whats pursued is the single most direct way toward a goal.