Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done

Batching and stacking are strategies that help you work more efficiently. Batching is the process of doing similar kinds of work in a contiguous stretch of time. Stacking is the process of doing dissimilar kinds of work in the same stretch of time.

As Krishna told Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, “You have a right to your actions, but never to your actions’ fruits.”5 When you do your best work, you give up the certainty of outcomes for the certainty of purpose.

Genius. What seems to be an expression of an inner creative force. Affinities. What you’re drawn to do. Talents. What seems to be your native skills or capabilities. Expertise. What you’ve learned through experience and practice. Strengths. What seems to come easy for you.

not all frogs are the same. A frog that requires a creative solution to address may require a focus block. When a bunch of little frogs can be caught at the same time, they should be batched and caught together.

KNOW THAT THE MORE IT MATTERS, THE MORE IT’S ONLY A START ANYWAY The more the project matters to you or the people who benefit from it, the more it’s only a start. A book is only a conversation starter. A community project is only the start of building a thriving community. A beta application starts a relationship of delight and utility with its us

sidelines. In many cases, when people are kept on the sidelines of projects that matter to you, they tend to gravitate toward being derailers and naysayers; when they’re on the sidelines, you’re choosing your projects and priorities over them, and people are incredibly sensitive to what appears to be a loss of status.

If you can’t find or create three focus blocks per week to work on your best-work project — even after you’ve dropped some projects and renegotiated other project timelines — consider whether it’s worth putting it on hold while you finish up another project that’s claiming your focus blocks.

While stacking might seem to redefine multitasking, the point of using a different term is to (a) break the habit or disrupt the belief of trying to do inefficient multitasking, and (b) have you think about the kinds of activities that you can do well simultaneously.

As you use the Five Projects Rule and weekly blocks, you’ll be able to create ever more space if you use the snowball method. The snowball method is a process of finishing a project to free up blocks you then apply on the next project.