Becky Blades - Start More Than You Can Finish: Break the Right Rules to Create Your Best Work

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Blades, Becky, author.

Title: Start more than you can finish / by Becky Blades.

Description: San Francisco, California : Chronicle Prism, 2022.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022006269 (print) | LCCN 2022006270 (ebook) | ISBN 9781797216133 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781797216140 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Goal (Psychology) | Achievement motivation. | Success.

Classification: LCC BF505.G6 B53 2022 (print) | LCC BF505.G6 (ebook) | DDC 158.1--dc23/eng/20220214

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006269

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006270

Design by Brooke Johnson and Becky Blades.

Illustrations by Becky Blades.

Author photograph by Jenny Wheat.

Typesetting by Maureen Forys.

Typeset in Gilroy and Tiempos Text.

Chronicle Prism is an imprint of Chronicle Books LLC, 680 Second Street, San Francisco, California 94107

www.chronicleprism.com

1. Adding up unfinished business and the magic of a third-grade seating chart
2. The reachable, teachable art of beginning
3. Barbecue dreams, lean startups, and hungry art students reveal the delicious possibilities
4. How we imagine, think, decide, and act to give an idea its pulse
5. Road trips, five-year-olds, new pilots, and comedy improvisers show us how to start more, better
6. How ignition sessions, bumpy beginnings, and a bias for action unleash our best work
7. A tale of dirty laundry shows us how to stop, restart, and rewrite the rules
8. Hacks, habits, and creative cross-training to lift more starts
9. How to trap inspiration with tape, power tools, and YouTube
10. Placing bets on timing, skills, risk, and ideas only we can start
11. Start like the world depends on it

The people who raised you thought they were doing the right thing.

When they told you not to start what you couldnt finish, they thought they were helping.

When they said, If its worth starting, its worth finishing, or Its not what you start, its what you finish, or even Dont bite off more than you can chew, they thought they were planting lifelong guiding wisdom that would make your dreams come true.

Im guessing the people who lodged these tropes in your head were not worrying so much about your creative destiny as they were about you leaving a mess lying around. They were afraid of crayons between the sofa cushions and half-constructed cakes in the kitchen.

Maybe they were afraid that if you didnt finish your homework, then youd never finish your tax returns, and then one unfinished thing would lead to another and youd be sleeping on their sofa in your thirties. They were afraid youd build bad habits that would ruin their dreams for your life. In other words, their fantasy finishes.

Im just spitballing here, because no one said these things to me.

My dad was kind of MIA, and my mom had six kids and a job, so she forgot to worry about crayons in the sofa. And she forgot to tell me to finish everything. In fact, my mom said things like, Youre never going to finish that macram dog poncho; maybe you can make it into a hat.

And look! I arrived safely at adulthood without poking my eye out or marrying an axe murderer. In fact, Im living a lusciously messy creative life.

The things we think without thinking have an oversized power over us.

And these particular auto-repeat tracks in our headsclichs that say finishing is everything and that a start without a finish is moral failurethey dont do the job they intended.

Likely, these tropes dont make us finish more , they just make us start less .

In a world that demands our creativity, what we say to each other about starting and finishing can be warped and often harmful. Whether its telling our dad not to start another lawn sculpture before hes sold his first three or telling kids not to get out the Legos before dinner, placing guardrails around initiative is the opposite of encouragement. It douses creative courage and stunts our growth. And it matters.

We need to start more.

We ALL need to start more.

We ALL need to imagine things and push the ignition switch to begin them.

We need to start things that will take ten minutes and things that will take five years, and things we will never, ever finish.

Because acting on our ideas is the best of who we are.

If you have ever hesitated to start something because you werent sure you could finish it, this book is for you.

If you have ever had an inspiration die on the vine because you didnt pick it and begin it fast enough, this book is for you.

If you have ever nixed a fun idea fearing it wouldnt be perfect or profitable, this book is for you.

If you, in your head, invented the carrot spiral kitchen tool thing but never made millions of dollars when it became AS SEEN ON TV because somebody else got to it first, this book is for you.

If you have ever been asked, Whatever happened with that thing you started? only to hang your head in shame because no, you did NOT ever finish that thing, this book is for you. Not because it will ensure you finish that thingalthough that is definitely a possibilitybut because shame about finishing gets in the way of starting. And I think I can help.

I wrote this book to ask you to leave MORE YOU in the world.

Isnt that what we all want? To make our time here matter? To leave scraps of ourselves behind so that years from now when the aliens land they just might find the poetry club manifesto we wrote in seventh grade and say to one another, Wow, these organisms were feisty.

We leave ourselves in the world in so many waysin how we raise our kids, how we treat people, how we make a living.

But this only scratches the surface. I have come to believe that the truest and the most vivid way we leave ourselves in the world is seen in how we act on our ideas in the things we make, deliberately.

The value in acting on our ideas is not measured in grand, planned finishes. The value is in each and every start.