Finish

Finish Plot Summary

Introduction

We all know that feeling. You start a new project with enthusiasm, determined this will be the time you follow through. Maybe it's writing that book, launching a business, or getting in shape. But somewhere along the way, perfectionism creeps in. The voice whispers that if you can't do it flawlessly, why bother at all? Before you know it, another dream joins the graveyard of unfinished projects. What if the biggest obstacle to your success isn't lack of discipline or knowledge, but perfectionism? This invisible force prevents 92% of people from completing their goals. The good news is that finishing doesn't require superhuman willpower or working harder. It requires working differently. By understanding how perfectionism sabotages our progress and implementing counterintuitive strategies, you can finally break through the cycle of chronic starting and transform into a consistent finisher.

Chapter 1: Cut Your Goal in Half for Real Progress

The first secret to finishing is shockingly simple: cut your goal in half. This advice runs counter to everything we've been taught about "dreaming big" and "reaching for the stars," but the research is clear—smaller goals lead to bigger results. Perfectionism tricks us into setting unrealistically large goals. When researcher Roger Buehler studied college seniors working on their theses, he found that on average, students estimated it would take them 34 days to complete their work. The reality? It took 56 days—almost twice as long. Even more telling, fewer than half the students finished by their worst-case deadline estimates. This "planning fallacy," first identified by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, shows we consistently underestimate how long tasks will take. This overly optimistic goal-setting creates a perfect recipe for failure. A friend of the author once decided to compete in a 70.3-mile Ironman triathlon despite having minimal swimming, biking, or running experience. He meticulously planned an eight-month training regimen. The result? He not only failed to complete the race but stopped going to the gym entirely. His oversized goal didn't just fail—it destroyed the healthy habits he already had in place. In the author's 30 Days of Hustle program, participants who cut their goals in half increased their performance by over 63% compared to previous goal attempts. Ninety percent reported increased motivation to continue working on their goals. One participant wrote: "I lost 6 lbs! Was hoping for 10, but since I cut my goal in half, I met and exceeded it! Here's to another 30 days!" If cutting your goal feels uncomfortable, consider doubling your timeline instead. If paying off $50,000 in debt seems overwhelming, extend your timeline. You'll pay a bit more interest, but you'll actually finish rather than giving up entirely. Remember, we're not debating between perfect completion and cutting corners—we're choosing between quitting and finishing. The next time you set a goal, ask yourself: "What's the worst that could happen if I make this goal smaller or give myself more time?" Perfectionism will tell you it's now or never, but that urgency often leads to January-only resolutions. By cutting your goal in half, you're not cheating—you're setting yourself up for sustainable success.

Chapter 2: Choose What to Bomb Without Guilt

When the author lived in Atlanta, a lawn care professional once told him, "I'm really excited because I'll be able to demonstrate our full range of capabilities on your lawn." This was code for "You have the worst grass ever." The yard was essentially a weed laboratory with a 10-to-1 weed-to-grass ratio. But the author didn't care—he had two toddlers at the time. Having young children is a beautiful crisis. When you're in the trenches of parenthood, your priorities necessarily shift. You're just trying to make it to bedtime each day. The lawn becomes the least of your concerns when you're preventing small humans from putting their hands in the oven or managing meltdowns over incorrectly shaped chicken strips. This illustrates a fundamental truth about accomplishing goals: to be good at one thing, you have to be bad at something else. Perfectionism's third lie is that you can do it all. You can't. The only way to accomplish a new goal is to feed it your most valuable resource: time. And you don't just give time to something—you take it from something else. Faced with this reality, you have two options: attempt more than is humanly possible and fail, or choose what to bomb and succeed at a goal that matters. Shonda Rhimes, creator of hit shows like Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, understands this principle well. When asked what she lets slide, she said, "Right now, I don't feel guilty that I'm not working out. I'll feel guilty about it at another time." When she's focused on running a show, physical fitness temporarily takes a backseat. To implement this strategy in your own life, identify your "strategic incompetence" areas—things you deliberately choose not to excel at during certain seasons. The author bombed at keeping up with TV shows like Breaking Bad and Stranger Things, managing Snapchat, responding promptly to emails, and maintaining his lawn. By consciously deciding what to neglect, he freed up time and energy for his priorities. When identifying what to bomb, use the traffic light approach. Some activities are green lights that push you toward your goal, like meal prepping when trying to get healthy. Others are red lights that stop your progress, like late nights with friends that lead to poor food choices. Spend a few minutes labeling your daily activities, and you'll quickly see what can be bombed. Remember, it's okay to say no without explanation or apology. If you can't eliminate an activity entirely, simplify it instead. As one busy mom shared, during deadline weeks her "laundry gets clean but not folded and put away, so we're a wrinkled family for a few days." Once you embrace strategic incompetence, you'll find the relief of focusing on what truly matters.

Chapter 3: Make It Fun If You Want It Done

Have fun. That's it. Two words, one clear direction. Make sure your goal is fun. Make sure you enjoy it. Make sure there's laughing and smiling involved with that thing you're going to do. Why would anyone choose a goal they didn't enjoy? It's because perfectionism is sneaky. Perfectionism believes that the harder something is, the more miserable something is, the better it is. The fourth lie it tells you is: Fun doesn't count. We see this clearly in the two most popular forms of goals: business and health. The author shares how this played out in his attempt to become an amazing table tennis player. Instead of simply buying a table and playing with friends, he sought out a certified coach. He ended up meeting an elderly Chinese coach named Steve Chan in the lobby of a locked student union building. For two hours, they practiced tableless tennis in the lobby while bewildered college students walked by. In subsequent lessons, Steve would hit hundreds of balls at him, yelling "Kill, kill, kill!" at his returns, but they never actually played a complete game. The author quit after four lessons—not because he hated table tennis, but because he wasn't having fun. Research from the 30 Days of Hustle program revealed that choosing a goal you believe will be enjoyable increases your likelihood of satisfaction by 31%. More surprisingly, it also increases performance success by 46%. Scientists studying elite swimmers expected to find athletes suffering through grueling practices, but instead discovered that even at 5:30 AM workouts, the swimmers "were lively, laughing, talking, enjoying themselves." The researchers concluded: "It is incorrect to believe that top athletes suffer great sacrifices to achieve their goals. Often, they don't see what they do as sacrificial at all. They like it." If your goal isn't naturally fun, ask: "How could this goal be more fun?" People are motivated in two primary ways: reward motivation (approaching desired outcomes) and fear motivation (avoiding negative outcomes). Understand which drives you more. If you're reward-motivated, focus on the prize of achievement. If you're fear-motivated, use the consequences of not acting as your driver. The beauty of fun is that it's personal and often weird. One person rewards herself with seltzer water on flights. The author lit a specific balsam and cedar candle only when writing his book. Some gym-goers are motivated by earning free T-shirts and stickers on a board. When Emily Bortz did a weight-loss challenge with her sister, the loser had to pay for the winner's massage—combining both reward and fear motivation. Fun isn't optional if you want to finish. It's necessary to kill perfectionism and make it through to the end. The more fun you add to your goal, the more likely you'll actually finish.

Chapter 4: Leave Hiding Places and Noble Obstacles

In 2004, the author created a fantasy basketball newsletter. Each week, he would deep dive into player stats, team analysis, and league trends. The newsletter was meticulously crafted, often stretching to ten pages of detailed content sprinkled with humor and life lessons. How many people read this labor of love? Eight. Not eight thousand or eight hundred—just eight people. Why dedicate hours every week to this newsletter? Because it was easier than writing a book. When perfectionism can't destroy our goals directly, it shifts to distraction. The closer we get to finishing, the more interesting everything else becomes. We put on "distraction goggles" that make other activities suddenly appear urgent and important. Perfectionism offers two distinct distractions: hiding places and noble obstacles. A hiding place is an activity you focus on instead of your goal—a safe space where you hide from your fear of messing up. Some hiding places are obvious time-wasters like watching Netflix, but others masquerade as productivity. The author's wife noticed he had an immaculate inbox whenever he was avoiding writing. Email provided the perfect hiding place—it was never done, offered a sense of accomplishment, and could be justified as necessary work. To identify your hiding places, ask three questions: Do you find yourself going there accidentally? Do you need a complicated explanation to justify why you're doing it? What do your friends think you're avoiding? Once identified, redirect the time, energy, and money spent in hiding places toward activities that help meet your goals. Noble obstacles are even more insidious—they're virtuous-sounding reasons for not working toward a finish. The author shares the story of "Bill," who never intends to clean his garage. When pressured by his wife, he enthusiastically says, "Great idea! Let's have a garage sale first!" This turns a one-step project (clean garage) into a sixteen-step project that includes checking HOA rules, making signs, researching garage sales on Pinterest, and more. A common noble obstacle starts with the word "until." Karen won't start her blog until she's checked with a copyright lawyer. Some guys won't work out until they find the perfect exercise program. Another version uses "if...then" logic: "If I work out, I'll get too bulky and need new clothes." These are attempts to make your goal harder than necessary so you don't have to finish while still looking respectable. Instead of making things complicated, finishers make things easier and simpler. Jason Kanupp, a furniture factory worker, found that attaching a short piece of radiator hose to a power drill helped him screw couch legs on twice as fast. This simple innovation increased his production by ten couches per week. When you work on a goal, continually ask: "Could things be easier? Could things be simpler?" Perfectionism will tell you you've spent so long in hiding places that your opportunity is gone. But remember the script for the TV show ER, created by Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg, which sat on a shelf for nineteen years before becoming the most successful drama in television history. It's never too late to leave your hiding places and abandon your noble obstacles.

Chapter 5: Track Data to Celebrate Imperfect Progress

A week after Easter, the author asked a friend who works at a church how the service went. His answer was surprising: "It was good. The music was great. We had a solid turnout, but we lost a few animals." The church had organized a petting zoo, but unfortunately, a rabbit was accidentally squashed by a toddler, and a duck was hugged too enthusiastically around the neck by another child. This story illustrates an important truth: failure is loud while progress is quiet. Perfectionism screams about our mistakes but whispers about our achievements. That's why tracking data is so powerful—it helps you see through perfectionism's claims that you're not getting anywhere and helps you celebrate your actual progress. Without data, progress virtually disappears due to what the author calls the "candle effect." The first candle lit in a dark room makes a dramatic difference. The second candle still helps significantly. But by the fifteenth candle, additional light barely registers. Similarly, your initial progress on a goal feels significant, but over time, improvements seem smaller even though you're still advancing. Jason Bartlett wanted to lose forty pounds. Despite eight weeks of hard work with a personal trainer and careful eating, the scale refused to budge. This is when most people review their progress and, discouraged by the apparent lack of results, quit. But Jason was missing important data points beyond weight—pants size, shirt size, BMI, number of workouts completed, miles run, and more. Some metrics would have shown progress while others would have proved process. Data is powerful because emotions lie, but data doesn't. Our emotions give us false impressions, spinning wild stories about failure. Data cuts through the noise. Yet many of us avoid tracking progress because perfectionism tells us that if we don't check our bank account, we won't see how low it is and won't feel bad. This denial ultimately leads to disaster. The author shares a story about ignoring a small hole in his roof that grew larger over months. Eventually, ants invaded, followed by spiders building webs to catch them, and finally squirrels moving into the attic. What started as a hundred-dollar repair became thousands of dollars of damage. The lesson? Don't wait until the squirrels move in to listen to data. To implement this strategy, choose one to three metrics to track. These might include time invested, weight lost, pages written, miles run, or any measurement relevant to your goal. When reviewing your data, remember it flows in two directions—forward and backward. Look at what you've tracked moving forward, but also study past attempts at similar goals to learn what worked and what didn't. If you're unhappy with your progress, you have three dials you can adjust: the goal (perhaps cut it in half), the timeline (extend it), or the actions (increase your efforts). In personal projects, you control all three dials. In work settings, you might only be able to adjust your actions. Remember, perfectionism tells you that your data must be complicated, but tracking just one to three points is enough to start. Data kills denial, which prevents disaster.

Chapter 6: Call a Friend Before the Finish Line

When you work with people who were stuck and then miraculously had a breakthrough, there are generally two reasons they finally finished. The first is a life-altering experience, like Meredith who went back to complete her degree after twenty-three years because she had open-heart surgery and realized how fragile life was. But since you can't schedule a near-death experience, there's a second, more practical solution: call a friend. Time and again, research shows that friends help us finish what we start. An artist who habitually shredded her work mentioned this habit casually to a friend. His eyes grew wide and he simply said, "No more shredding!" That was the day she quit destroying her art. What's remarkable is that her friend didn't give an eloquent explanation or commit to tracking her progress—he just named the problem and helped her see it clearly. We often expect profound interventions—a wise guru emerging from the shadows with life-changing advice. But the change we need is usually not that elaborate or complicated. It's a friend who breaks the habit loop and tells us to stop shredding. It's a friend who shows us that what we've accepted as normal isn't normal. Author Josh Shipp, who spent his childhood bouncing between foster homes, has a favorite saying: "Every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story." This isn't just true for children—adults never outgrow the need for someone to believe in them. As you approach the finish line, three final fears often emerge. First, the fear of what happens next—like the master shipbuilder in Steinbeck's Cannery Row who never completed his boats because he feared having to launch them. Second, the fear that it won't be perfect—like the author who read 7.9 of the 8 Harry Potter books but couldn't finish the series for fear the ending wouldn't be amazing. Third, the fear of "what now?"—the emptiness that can follow achievement when you've had a single-minded focus. Before you give in to these fears, ask yourself: "What am I getting out of not finishing?" Because you're getting something. Maybe it's control over the outcome (if you never try, you can't fail). Maybe it's praise for being a martyr who sacrifices personal goals for others. Maybe it's lowered expectations from people around you. Identify what you're gaining by not finishing, then make the reward for finishing even bigger. Don't dread the day before done. Fear no finish line. You've worked too hard to give up now. Reach out to a friend who can help you cross that finish line, and remember that finishing is simply keeping a promise to yourself.

Summary

Breaking through perfectionism isn't about trying harder—it's about trying differently. Throughout this journey, we've dismantled perfectionism's most destructive lies: that you must be perfect or quit, that your goal should be bigger, that you can do it all, that fun doesn't count, and that you need complicated obstacles to succeed. By cutting your goals in half, choosing what to bomb, making your goals fun, leaving your hiding places, tracking your data, and calling a friend before the finish line, you've built a powerful arsenal against perfectionism. As the author eloquently states, "Goals you refuse to chase don't disappear—they become ghosts that haunt you." When we surrender to perfectionism, our unfulfilled passions don't simply vanish; they transform into frustration that often manifests as anger directed elsewhere. The truth is that starting is fun, but the future belongs to finishers. Today, make a commitment to yourself: choose one goal that matters to you, apply these principles, and experience the joy of finally crossing that finish line—not perfectly, but completely.

About Author

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Jon Acuff

Jon Acuff is the New York Times Bestselling author of eight books, including Soundtracks, Your New Playlist, and the Wall Street Journal #1 bestseller Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done.When he’s not writing or recording his popular podcast, All It Takes Is a Goal, Acuff can be found on a stage, as one of INC's Top 100 Leadership Speakers. He's spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences, colleges and companies around the world including FedEx, Nissan, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Chick-fil-A, Nokia and Comedy Central. For over 20 years he's also helped some of the biggest brands tell their story, including The Home Depot, Bose, Staples, and the Dave Ramsey Team. Jon lives outside of Nashville, TN with his wife Jenny and two teenage daughters.

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