Always Finish

Written by: Scott Britton

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Scott Britton| 11 Comments

Its so important to finish in everything you do – especially as an entrepreneur. When you’re doing startups there is never enough time in the day. You’re forced to pick and choose your battles and devote less time to certain things you care about. A hierarchy results where some things get more time and attention than others. I’ve found this segmentation to be fine, but when you start cutting it short on things it can be a slippery slope.

Three things that have been consistently important to me throughout my entrepreneurial journey are my professional goals, fitness, and diet. Early on, I decided that my diet and fitness regimen were going to take a backseat to me trying to kick the door down as an entrepreneur. I opted to go to the gym 3 days a week vs. my former 5 and eat out more because its quicker than preparing your meals – more time for work.

As the nights got longer there’d be mornings where I just didn’t feel like going to the gym. At weeks end I’d have hit the gym 1-2 times instead of my target 3. It was always easy for me to justify skipping because I was spending those hours catching up on sleep from working late. I’d tell myself those extra hours would allow me to be more productive at work…after all getting ahead professionally was at the top of my pyramid.

Over time I began to notice failure to accomplish goals outside the professional realm were taking a serious toll on my discipline. I’d feel urges to make excuses not to do something I needed to do at work. I’d find ways to stay busy instead of really focusing on things I needed to, but didn’t want to.

I had thought I was doing myself a favor by pushing aside other things like the gym and my diet for work…but one day it hit me. Cutting it in short in those areas had caused a bad habit and it was carrying over to all aspects of my life – especially work. Pretty ironic since I thought that I was actually doing myself a favor for awhile there.

The greatest lesson I learned is its fine to make sacrifices in certain areas of your life as an entrepreneur, but make sure you finish what you set out to do in every area of your life. You’ll be far better off, even if that means setting less ambitious goals at first. Just make sure your finish.

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  • Danny Hui

    there is an old proverb

    1000000000000

    The “1″ represents health, if you don’t have that, you have nothing.

    • Anonymous

      I’ve never heard truer words

    • http://www.frankdenbow.com Frank Denbow

      My father (a doctor) constantly tells me that nothing is more important than your health.

  • P. Tavares

    Deepest-hitting piece of advice I read in a long time…

    I was particularly struck when I read

    “I’d feel
    urges to make excuses not to do something I needed to do at work. I’d
    find ways to stay busy instead of really focusing on things I needed to,
    but didn’t want to.”

    because I immediately recognised some behaviors I had developed and noticed years before, but could not understand where they came from.

    • Anonymous

      I’m glad you got value from this post. Whether we like it or not, habits permeate all facets of our lives which is why we need to be really careful when we start segmenting the care and diligence we put forth in different areas. You should check out Seth Godin’s book “LinchPin” and his chapter on shipping – it has some good insight into why we put off things the hardest things which are often the ones we really need to do.

  • Anonymous

    Great post!

    Another reason to always finish is that every time you committing to something you make yourself a promise.

    If you break that promise your brain will handle it the same way as when let down by a friend, the friends trust is decreased. 

    So, make sure you finish or your self trust will decrease.

  • http://www.facebook.com/galdosd Domingo Galdos

    Actually, I have an alternative theory to explain what happened. There is a lot of research documenting the mental benefits of exercise, especially on aspects like focus, planning, discipline, etc. These are just the sorts of aspects you found began to wane. 

    Therefore, I theorize that actually it was the decrease in regular exercise that caused the change, not a vague changing habit of “completing things.” After all, finishing what you set out to do can often be beneficial, but it can also be foolish when it later turns out that what was begun was unwise or low-priority. Something doesn’t seem quite right about this theory to me, since I know many very successful people make a point of being able to stoically change priorities when necessary rather than getting mired in pointless completion of no-longer-useful goals.

    The hard thing is that although we ARE ourselves, we do find ourselves reduced to theorizing as to why changes in ourselves are happening– looking around to find a cause.

    How would you test the “finishing things” theory against the “exercise increases focus” theory? No problem– try going back to your better exercise schedule but letting things slide as needed in non-health related areas. I predict you’ll do fine. If you do, that suggests that exercise was the factor. If you don’t, that suggests your “finishing things” theory was correct.

    I’d be interested in what you think, or what your results end up being either way!

    • Anonymous

      There’s no question there is validity to exercise promoting exercise focus, planning, discipline etc. I definitely feel that. But still I maintain their are side effects of not finishing – atleast personally I experience them. Lets get back to exercise on a e more granular level.  When I start cutting a workouts short or even sets for that matter nothing nothing drastically terrible happens to me. I feel ok and subconsciously give myself permission to cut it short next time. This type of behavior can have permeate other arenas of our lives if repeated consistently.

      Again this is only an account of my personal experience. Other people may react in other ways.

  • Ryan

    I am in the same fit of realisation. I now gym at lunch and prepare my food. I don’t do lunch meetings or work around it. I gym on weekdays only as it is “part of work” and weekends are free to work or sleep in. Up at 6am, gym for 1.5-2 hours, finish at 8. Works for me :)

  • Joe

    I think there may be a bigger problem here than always finishing (it’s actually very important to know when to leave something unfinished). The bigger problem was thinking that more hours means more productivity. This was shown false nearly a century ago for by Henry Ford (http://www.worklessparty.org/timework/ford.htm), and these were factory workers! Imagine a creative brain, a brain that needs to think, that needs down time to consolidate ideas, to dream, to sleep…

    Personally I’m never more productive than when I find 3-6 things that I would be thrilled to have accomplished today expecting my task list to take 5-8 hours to work. If I finish early I’m done. If I can’t quite get it all done, I’m still done. If I’m consistently not finishing, I reevaluate my expectations, and make sure that I break down tasks more. If I’m consistently finishing early, I might reevaluate my expectations there too. The trick is, when you are focusing on what you need to accomplish today, and know that you can stop once you’ve accomplished, it’s far easier to ignore distractions like the web and email.

    Remember working more != more work done.

  • dirk

    Does this apply to a bottle of whisky and that last 8 cigarettes in the packet before I quit?