How To Finish Your Personal Projects.

An issue that regularly comes up with my coaching clients is the need for help completing personal projects. Unlike work-related projects, personal projects rarely have any accountability. At work, there’s likely to be a boss setting the parameters and deadlines and colleagues who depend on you to do your part. With personal projects, this accountability is almost nonexistent.

However, before any project can succeed, whether business or personal, there needs to be a clearly defined outcome. A single sentence that states the desired outcome and by when it must be completed. The most famous project clarifying sentence was given by John F Kennedy in 1961 when he said:

(The US) “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

Twenty-six words that set NASA on a course that captivated the world. Those words were clear, contained a deadline and left no one in any doubt about what was to be achieved.

It did not matter that much of the technology and know-how had not been discovered when Kennedy spoke those words. Developing the technology and know-how was for the scientists and engineers to figure out. All that mattered was a clear outcome (desired result) and a timeline.

So, before you begin your project, develop your clarifying sentence — a sentence that clearly states your desired outcome and when you will complete it.

Now, a mistake most people make at this stage is to waste a lot of time thinking and planning. Thinking and planning are the opposite of acting. They are often used as an excuse not to act. Once you have a clear outcome, you don’t need to spend a lot of time thinking and planning. All you need is the very first action step.

For example, if you were to build a conservatory on the side of your house, the first step would be to get some quotes, so you can decide if the project is financially viable. It would be a complete waste of time and energy to spend several months thinking about it if you had yet to learn the cost.

So imagine you decide with your partner that you would like to build a conservatory. Then, the next day, you should contact some companies that build conservatories to give you a quotation.

You may also need to find out if you require any planning permissions from your local government office, and if so, what forms would you need to complete?

Without this information, nothing is going to happen. This is why taking the first logical steps is essential once you have decided to proceed with the project. The following steps will naturally fall into place.

For instance, once you have the quotations, the next step would be to secure the finance. Once that’s done, you would hire the right company to go ahead and build it for you.

Smaller projects (or goals) work the same way. You may need to lose weight if you have gained a few extra pounds over the winter. What would be your desired weight, and when would you like to achieve it?

From there, the next step would be to decide how you will do it. Will you do it through exercise or diet, or will it be a combination of both? Once you have decided on that, all you need to do is start. Go for that walk and change your diet to eat the right amounts of the right foods. It does not require several months of research. Just get started. You can modify your approach as you go along.

Where’s the antagonist?

There is one more part to completing personal projects that is required. You need an antagonist. NASA’s antagonist during the moon landing programme was the Soviet Union. This is why they called it the “Space Race”. NASA and the Soviet Union were racing to be the first to the moon.

Competitors, rivals, or enemies bring energy to a project. It’s that sense of urgency that stops hesitation. For most of us, we will unlikely have a natural competitor; however, there is one source where you will always find an antagonist. That is within yourself.

One of the reasons we struggle to complete our projects is because of ourselves. As human beings, we are naturally lazy. That was a good thing when food was scarce, but we don’t live in that world today. For most of us, food is in abundance all year round. We do not need to conserve our energy for hunting food.

That laziness manifests itself in many ways. The soft seduction of our sofas when we know we should be washing up, the enveloping warmth of our beds on a cold winter’s morning, and the ease of ordering unhealthy fast food after a hards day’s work. These all conspire to prevent us from doing what we know we should be doing.

Whatever your weakness, you need to identify it and make it your enemy. You must decide from now on; you will never let your sofa, bed, or local fast food delivery service win. Whenever you find yourself being seduced by any of these antagonists, you must stop, say no, and immediately go and do what you know is right.

Once you have decided on your project, written out a clear, clarifying sentence and identified your antagonist(s), take the first step. Start that diet, call the builders, or buy storage boxes to clear out a room in your home. Just do the first natural task. One thing you must never do is tell yourself you need to do more planning. Planning never gets the job done. The only way you will complete your project is to act.

Thank you for reading my stories! 😊

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