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As I was reading James Clear 2016’s annual review, I came across a very important line that grabbed my attention the most: “Beginners are many. Finishers are few.” It is interesting that among so many other thousand words, these very simple words hooked me and convinced me to write about this principle.
It is important to emphasize that the developer of the famous framework, Ruby on Rails, posted a related tweet about it on 1 January 2017:
2017: Start fewer things, but finish them.
I have already written about it in the past, but I wanted to reemphasize its importance once again, making sure that many other people reading this benefit from it.
There are so many things that we can start doing. A lot of cool projects that we can work on, a lot of opportunities that we can pursue, a lot of books that we can read. With so many things along the way, it can be a bit difficult to deal with the urge of initial excitement and resisting the temptation of not starting to do something that looks promising. Thus, we start so many things at the same time without any prior evaluation considering the plausible pathways and outcomes that such commitment might yield and what other important things are being abandoned and sabotaged because of this. Only a few weeks or months at most pass by and then we simply give up from that commitment and engage with other new things, but never seem to finish anything.
There might be cases when what you started despite being taken into a serious consideration gets out of the way and turns out to be something that is not worth doing anymore, but these might be only a few cases which should not turn this behavior into a norm.
Big successes require a lot of effort and dedication, which is something hard for a lot of people. Thus, they find it easier to start something new and abandon their commitments when things get tough and when there does not seem any initial reward. They forget to focus on the big picture and only think for a short-term period.
Rather than jumping from one project to the other, from one book to the other without finishing anything, it is better to give this behavior a critical judgement. This behavior of starting and abandoning things before finishing them takes a lot of time and effort, which would otherwise be very helpful and beneficial if they were to be invested wisely in something important and promising. Although not every project or opportunity turns out into a massively used and famous project, it is worth going until the end unless there is a valid reason for quitting it.
Asking questions is one of the ways that can help in this regard when you feel unsure whether you should be among the finishers of your commitments. Some of the helpful questions that can unlock some ways of thinking might be:
Am I quitting because I am afraid of failure and I do not want to fail in front of other people?
Am I quitting because I am afraid to put in more effort that is beyond my current skill level?
Am I quitting because I am trying to hide behind the curtain of excuses?
Would my 80 years old self be content with this decision of quitting?
We all might fall short from time to time, but it is important to avoid these types of slips from our principles and not let them become our habits. Great things require a lot of effort, determination and take a long time to happen. There is no overnight success. Though starting something from the beginning might seem easier than finishing something that has hit at a temporary wall brick, it actually might take longer periods of time and attention.
