A Multitude of Unfinished Projects

Today a friend of mine called me to talk about quitting her schooling. She felt that she wasn’t going to be able to create a viable profession out of what she was studying. This isn’t the first time she has done this, she knows, and I know, that when she gets close to finishing something, she backs out of it.

I realized talking to her, that I do the same thing sometimes. Often I start several major projects at once, and never see them through to the end. Thus a lot of my time and energy is wasted on many things, when if I had been successful in one of them, it would have made all the difference.

I think it is easy to get excited about something new. It is even easier to give up on something when roadblocks pop up. I think this is why we start so many projects at once. We want to feel that newness, not the barriers that get in our way. Unfortunately you always run into barriers at some point, and so when you come to them, it may be time to evaluate your situation.

Ask yourself if you are quitting because the project really isn’t going anywhere, or is it because you ran into a small obstacle and you want that new feeling again? This desire to start a new project, and discard the other, is often the result of being unhappy.

It is yet another way to make us forget to look inward and find the real causes of our unhappiness. We can get lost in this new project, so we are perpetually starting new projects to continue “the fix”.

In reality, this is a huge waste, of time, energy, and often resources. If you talk to any successful person out there, you will find that they stopped all the side projects, and put all of their effort into the one big project they were passionate about. It was the moment that they focused, that things unfolded for them.

As the year comes to a close, ask yourself what projects you started, but did not finish? Try and find a reason why you did not finish them. If it was out of boredom or lost of interest, remember this the next time you start something new. Just because you focus on one project at a time, doesn’t mean you can’t do all those other things you want to do. You simply need to be a little more patient.