Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done

when you’re at the monthly perspective, the quarterly perspective informs the why of the month and the weekly perspective informs the how of the month.

Your supporters are the people who are doing work with and for you to help you get the project done. More so than status or level of accomplishment, you can ask the people in this category for support and expect them to meet reasonable deadlines — guides and peers are much more removed from this aspect.

The challenges filling the air sandwich rest a level below those issues. For instance, there’s nothing intellectually difficult about planning our day; the challenge lies in following that plan, and there’s no killer app, system, or big idea that’s going to help us do that.

Our lives follow a similar pattern. Every three to five years something is importantly different. We move to new places. Our kids, siblings, and parents go through thresholds that may require us to adapt. We go through stages of dating and marriage every three to five years. Over the course of three to five years we age and aren’t able to do some t

Being disciplined means committing to what is important to you instead of merely saying something is important to you. It’s about starting when you feel like stopping, not because you want to work more but rather your goal is important enough to you that you don’t simply work on it when it’s convenient. It’s about making your priorities a reality.

Like clockwork, our inner and outer worlds are going to change every three to five years. What the change will be, we’re not sure, but we know that there will be change.

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.

Awareness is required to know what your best work is and to notice how your emotions and presence shift when you’re doing your best work.

Undercultivation of intention is easier to grasp and see in ourselves and others than overcultivation of intention, at least at first blush. But when we look around and see how stricken with anxiety people are because they’re so focused on achieving certain goals by certain times by certain ways, it’s easy to see how much people’s suffering comes f