Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done

First, it’s harder to do because how you do it will be different. Learning from books and others can get you started, but at a certain point you’ll have to start blazing your own trail and end up in the no-man’s-land where everyone doing their best work ends up.

Here are some conventional verbs as well as what size of a chunk they relate to: Quarter- or month-sized project verbs (for work that needs a few week- or month-sized projects to complete): Rework Develop Strategize Launch/Ship Build Publish (books, articles) Kick off Move/Relocate Week-sized project verbs (for work that needs at least one block, b

Focus blocks fuel your best work. No or too few focus blocks equals no finished best work. It’s really that simple.

Before we get to the questions that will help you pick the one idea to work on, know that “not now” isn’t the same thing as “no.” By picking one idea, you’ll be saying “not now” to others — this is displacement in effect — and it can often feel like “not now” means the same thing as “no.”

There’s always some idyllic time in the future when it will make sense to focus on your best work.

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.

The more years I spend on this planet, the more I see that we need the constraint of finite time for the meaning making that matters the most to us. That constraint creates displacement, and taking displacement seriously allows us to make better choices.

do. In reality, three projects is a better limit for creative and/or professional projects because it leaves bandwidth to use for life/personal projects and accounts for the work we’re doing but not counting.

At the weekly perspective, there are four basic blocks that we can build into our days: Focus blocks. 90–120-minute blocks of time when we’re especially creative, inspired, and able to do high-level work that requires focus. Social blocks. 90–120-minute blocks of time when we’re primed and energetically in the right space to meet other people. Admi