<story><title>Always a starter, never a finisher.</title><url>https://plus.google.com/u/0/116594037963311275379/posts/5c1Y78Luymg</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peteforde</author><text>My father is an engineer, and he always taught me that there&apos;s no such thing as a good job half completed. The problem with his perspective is that it is uni-dimensional, and with good reason: if you half-build a bridge, people are going to be sad. He&apos;s an engineer and he&apos;s got to finish the bridge.&lt;p&gt;However, my father didn&apos;t decide that a bridge was required, nor did he choose the ideal location for the bridge based on urban planning and geographic surveys. And let&apos;s be clear — he&apos;s not going to be out in the rain, assembling raw materials into a structure either. His job would start with the design and continue with the project plan, and possibly end as a consultant or one of a team of over-seers. He&apos;s not finishing the bridge, but his role was necessary to get the project from where it was to where it needed to be when someone else would take over.&lt;p&gt;Technical projects are often the same. I&apos;m generalizing, but you see a lot of supporting evidence which suggests that you have your visionary, your architect, your builder and your &quot;last 10%&quot;-ers. One person can be all of these things, but almost never all at once on the same project.&lt;p&gt;What I learned when I came of age was that I am a Starter. I have good ideas and the ability to rally others to a cause. I&apos;ve evolved the ability to network and communicate. I&apos;ve forgiven myself for not being a Finisher, because there are lots of people that hate starting and love to finish. There are loads of people who will never start and hate finishing, but they are the core team during the middle.&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you stop seeing your inclinations as a problem and start thanking your lucky stars that you have a regular flow of potentially great ideas. The main skill you need to develop is your ability to kill off the bad ones early so that you can focus your passion and evangelism on the winners.&lt;p&gt;Chances are, if you got bored it wasn&apos;t going to turn out well anyhow. Listen to what your subconscious is trying to tell you.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humblepied.com/jessica-hische/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.humblepied.com/jessica-hische/&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cletus</author><text>&amp;#62; What I learned when I came of age was that I am a Starter.&lt;p&gt;The more accurate way to put this is &quot;I am not a Finisher&quot;. The argument here is that starting and finishing are two equally valuable skills that are somehow equivalent.&lt;p&gt;A &quot;Starter&quot; is a fairweather friend. It&apos;s easy to start things. Most people like starting things. Note this is different from networking and so forth, which is really a separate skill altogether.&lt;p&gt;Employers, business partners and investors will look at what you&apos;ve finished and don&apos;t care what you&apos;ve started. When something is 80% done or when times are tough or it&apos;s time to soldier on and run the last mile of the marathon, nobody wants the guy around who says &quot;well, I started, that&apos;s my skill but I&apos;m done now, I suggest you find a Finisher&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Not being a Finisher isn&apos;t a different skill--it&apos;s a character flaw.</text></comment>
<story><title>Always a starter, never a finisher.</title><url>https://plus.google.com/u/0/116594037963311275379/posts/5c1Y78Luymg</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peteforde</author><text>My father is an engineer, and he always taught me that there&apos;s no such thing as a good job half completed. The problem with his perspective is that it is uni-dimensional, and with good reason: if you half-build a bridge, people are going to be sad. He&apos;s an engineer and he&apos;s got to finish the bridge.&lt;p&gt;However, my father didn&apos;t decide that a bridge was required, nor did he choose the ideal location for the bridge based on urban planning and geographic surveys. And let&apos;s be clear — he&apos;s not going to be out in the rain, assembling raw materials into a structure either. His job would start with the design and continue with the project plan, and possibly end as a consultant or one of a team of over-seers. He&apos;s not finishing the bridge, but his role was necessary to get the project from where it was to where it needed to be when someone else would take over.&lt;p&gt;Technical projects are often the same. I&apos;m generalizing, but you see a lot of supporting evidence which suggests that you have your visionary, your architect, your builder and your &quot;last 10%&quot;-ers. One person can be all of these things, but almost never all at once on the same project.&lt;p&gt;What I learned when I came of age was that I am a Starter. I have good ideas and the ability to rally others to a cause. I&apos;ve evolved the ability to network and communicate. I&apos;ve forgiven myself for not being a Finisher, because there are lots of people that hate starting and love to finish. There are loads of people who will never start and hate finishing, but they are the core team during the middle.&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you stop seeing your inclinations as a problem and start thanking your lucky stars that you have a regular flow of potentially great ideas. The main skill you need to develop is your ability to kill off the bad ones early so that you can focus your passion and evangelism on the winners.&lt;p&gt;Chances are, if you got bored it wasn&apos;t going to turn out well anyhow. Listen to what your subconscious is trying to tell you.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humblepied.com/jessica-hische/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.humblepied.com/jessica-hische/&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>johnfn</author><text>&amp;#62; Chances are, if you got bored it wasn&apos;t going to turn out well anyhow. Listen to what your subconscious is trying to tell you.&lt;p&gt;I agree with most of this post, but I disagree with this sentence. It&apos;s very, very easy to trick yourself into believing that a great idea that you&apos;re working on is not actually interesting. The problem is that you&apos;ve been working with the idea so much that you no longer are seeing the thing you&apos;re making with fresh eyes.&lt;p&gt;I know this because it&apos;s happened to me over and over again. My most salient example was when I was working on a game a few years ago. I got a month (this was during high school, so development times weren&apos;t that long :)) into development and started thinking it was crap, no one was going to like it - things like that. Normally, I would just stop and work on another idea, but this time I did something a bit unusual - I posted the game and asked for feedback from the game community. This was the turning point. They said that it was great, I should keep working on it, and they&apos;d love to play it when it was done.&lt;p&gt;I finished it. It turned out to be my most successful game, ever. It netted hundreds of thousands of views. It&apos;s been on dozens of websites. And to think that I was completely bored and uninterested with it weeks before I finished.&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, I think this raises a great way of getting good at finishing: &lt;i&gt;show your unfinished work to other people.&lt;/i&gt; If it&apos;s good, they&apos;ll love it, and the self-confidence boost you&apos;ll get from that can carry you further. And if they hate it, well, maybe you should be working on something else after all :-)</text></comment>