How to Get to Your Goal's Finish Line

Happy Sunday, ladies,

I am looking forward to seeing you tomorrow night.

I read Finish: Stop Making Perfect the Enemy of Done by Jon Acuff over the weekend and realized that was a good theme for tomorrow's meetup.

We've talked (and I've written) in depth about how to figure out what your next career should be and what you need it to provide, but that's not enough to get it done. Even if you know what's next, you need to start, keep going, and get to the finish line—and the last part is often the toughest part.

And that's what Jon's current book is about. He had written about getting started in a previous book but then realized that's not the biggest challenge for him and his readers. So in this book he tackles how to keep going and what it takes to become a finisher.

It's a quick and easy read, so I highly recommend you pick it up, but I'll share some highlights so we can discuss this tomorrow night.

Basically, we have trouble finishing because we allow our perfectionist natures to get in the way and make it too difficult. Sometimes we unconsciously sabotage ourselves by giving up as soon as it's not perfect, doesn't come easily, are nearly done but afraid of what's next, or for many other reasons perfection tricks us into believing it's better to give up. The answer is to either cut our goals in half, double the timeline by when we want to achieve the goal, or take more actions to ensure it gets done. And to help with this, use either positive or negative reinforcement (e.g., reward or fear) to motivate you, but make sure that both the goal and reinforcements are the right size for what you're trying to accomplish.

And if you can build fun into your goal and choose other things to either pause or bomb at, you're much more likely to get to the finish line. The goal need not be difficult, complicated, or miserable—that's perfection talking and not true.

So give this some thought and let's discuss tomorrow night how we can all become finishers.

Until tomorrow,
Karina