Jon Acuff - Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done

I fought the wrong ghost in 2013.

That year, I published a book urging readers to start. I challenged them to get off the couch. I dared people to launch a business. I encouraged them to begin a diet or a write a book or pursue a million other goals theyd been dreaming about for years.

I thought the biggest problem for people was the phantom of fear that prevented them from beginning. If I could just nudge them across the starting line, everything would work out. Fear was the ghost holding them back and starting was the only way to beat it.

I was half right.

The start does matter. The beginning is significant. The first few steps are critical, but they arent the most important.

Do you know what matters more? Do you know what makes the start look silly and easy and almost insignificant?

The finish.

Year after year, readers have pulled me aside at events and said, Ive never had a problem starting. Ive started a million things, but I never finish them. How do I finish?

I didnt have an answer, but I needed one in my own life, too.

Ive finished a few things. Ive run half marathons, written six books, and dressed myself pretty well today, but those are the exceptions in my half-done life.

Ive only completed 10 percent of the books I own. It took me three years to finish six days of the P90X home exercise program. When I was twenty-three I made it to blue belt in karate, approximately seventy-six belts below finishing the goal of black belt. I have thirty-two half-started Moleskine notebooks in my office and nineteen tubes of nearly finished Chapstick in my bathroom. A financial adviser would probably go bananas over the hydrated lips category of my personal budget.

My garage is also a mausoleum to almost. Theres the telescope (used five times), the fishing pole (used three times), and the snowboard with a season pass to a local mountain (used zero times). And who can forget the moped I bought three years ago and rode a total of twenty-two miles! I didnt even title or register it. I live off the grid. The grid of done.

At least Im not alone in my unfinishing ways.

According to studies, 92 percent of New Years resolutions fail. Every January, people start with hope and hype, believing that this will be the New Year that does indeed deliver a New You.

But though 100 percent start, only 8 percent finish. Statistically youve got the same shot at getting into Juilliard to become a ballerina as you do at finishing your goals. Their acceptance rate is about 8 percent, tiny dancer.

I thought my problem was that I didnt try hard enough. Thats what every shiny-toothed guru online says. Youve got to hustle! You must grind! Sleep when youre dead!

Maybe I was just lazy.

After all, I knew that I had dangerously low levels of grit in my life. I learned that when I measured myself on Angela Duckworths excellent Grit Scale. My score was so low that it didnt even make the chart. There should have been bonus points for finishing the test, which I surprisingly did.

I started getting up earlier. I drank enough energy drinks to kill a horse. I hired a life coach and ate more superfoods.

Nothing worked, although I did develop a pretty nice eyelid tremor from all the caffeine. It was as if my eye were waving at you, very, very quickly.

While I was busy putting elbow grease on the grindstone and reaching for the stars like Abe Lincoln, I created a 30-day challenge online. It was called the 30 Days of Hustle, and it was a video course that helped thousands of people knock out their goals.

What happened next was at best an accident. Youre not supposed to admit that in books like this. When you write self-help tomes, its tempting to rewrite your own past as proof that you are qualified to help someone elses future.

The leader who stumbled into success goes back in time and invents ten steps that got him there so that he can write a book called 10 Steps That Will Get You There. I honestly didnt plan what Im about to tell you. I was as surprised as you are going to be. If anything, Im just excited it actually worked.

In the spring of 2016, a researcher from the University of Memphis named Mike Peasley approached me with a proposition.

He wanted to study people who took my 30 Days of Hustle goal-setting course to analyze what worked and what didnt. He was finishing his PhD and wanted to write papers about what his study revealed. In the months that followed, he surveyed more than 850 participants to build a solid foundation of real data.

This was a new experience for me, because prior to that I was operating under the great Make Up Whatever You Want to Say on the Internet with No Foundation in Fact ordinance of 2003.

What he learned changed my entire approach to finishing, to this book, and in some ways, to my life.

Mike found that people who completed the course had a 27 percent greater chance of success over other times they had attempted goal setting. That was encouraging but not really surprising, given that when you work on something consistently for thirty days, you get better at it.

What was astonishing to me is something that should be more apparent to all of us: the exercises that caused people to increase their progress dramatically were those that took the pressure off, those that did away with the crippling perfectionism that caused people to quit their goals. Whether they were trying to lose a pants size, write more content on a blog, or get a raise, the results were the same. The less that people aimed for perfect, the more productive they became.

It turns out that trying harder isnt the answer.

Grinding more isnt the solution.

Chronic starters can become consistent finishers.

We can finish.

Admit it, you felt like this book was going to be similar to a Red Bull commercial. Id give you a few tips, get you motivated, show you how to get the eye of the tiger, and help you do more, more, more!

Hows that working out for you? Is trying harder helping? Is doing more making you like life more? Have any of the productivity tips, time management tricks, or life hacks helped even a little bit?

They havent and they wont.

If you want to finish, youve got to do all that you can to get rid of your perfectionism right out of the gate. Youve got to have fun, cut your goal in half, choose what things youll bomb, and a few other actions you wont see coming at first.