How to Finish Things: A Practical Guide

In this post, we’ll explore strategies to get over distractions. By completing things, you can unlock more opportunities, and grow faster.

5 tips to finish things faster

Limit Your Commitments
Avoid adding new projects or fun tasks until you’ve finished your current ones. A manageable workload is essential—try limiting yourself to 7 tasks max at a time.
Practice Mindfulness
Meditation helps you connect with the present moment, strengthening pathways in your prefrontal cortex¹. This can alleviate executive dysfunction, making it easier to focus and complete tasks.
Embrace Imperfection
“Perfect is the enemy of good.” – Voltaire
Progress is a skill you develop over time. Completing a task—even imperfectly—teaches valuable lessons and builds momentum for the next one.
Start Small
Small wins boost confidence and set the tone for tackling larger challenges. For example, making your bed each morning creates a pattern of organization that spills into other areas of life. This mirrors the “broken windows”² theory in law enforcement, where addressing small issues fosters a broader sense of order.
Understand the Benefits of Completion
Finishing tasks brings rewards—better opportunities, personal growth, and a sense of accomplishment.

Benefits of finishing stuff

Some benefits of finishing stuff are that you get better things.

Modeling Shiny Object Syndrome

The tendency to lose focus, also known as Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS), can be represented mathematically:

We’ll define our attention level over time with a function $A(t)$ :

$A(t)$ represents our attention or focus level on a given project.
The rate of change in attention $\frac{dA}{dt}$ depends on:

$\frac{dA}{dt} = E - \lambda A + S \sin(\omega t)$

where:

Initial Excitement ( $E$ ): This is your initial motivation level. The stronger it is, the more focused you’ll be at first.
Decay in Interest ( $-\lambda A$ ): Over time, your attention naturally fades. Higher values mean quicker loss of interest.
Distractions ( $S\sin(\omega t)$ ): This term represents distractions—the “shiny objects” that appear periodically to pull your attention away.

Conclusion

By understanding the dynamics of attention and focus, you can take control of your productivity and project completion. As you develop the skill of finishing tasks, you unlock new opportunities, foster personal growth, and experience the satisfaction of accomplishment.

Extra Reading

Deep Work by Cal Newport: Learn how to cultivate focus and achieve high-impact results.
Atomic Habits by James Clear: Discover practical strategies for building habits that stick.
Getting Things Done by David Allen: A guide to organizing tasks and reducing overwhelm.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle: Dive into mindfulness and living in the present moment.

Rathore, M., et al. (2023). https://doi.org/10.4103/ijoy.ijoy_88_22 ↩︎
Wilson, J. Q. & Kelling, G. L. (1982) Broken windows: The police and neighborhood safety. ↩︎

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