How can you finally transform your big ideas into concrete achievements? What’s stopping you from making progress on the goals that matter most to you?
In his book Start Finishing: How to Go From Idea to Done, Charlie Gilkey helps you push through procrastination and focus on real work. He walks you through turning abstract dreams into completable projects by making intentional choices, maximizing your resources, and creating realistic plans.
Continue reading for an overview of this book that can help you finish what you start.
Overview of Start Finishing: How to Go From Idea to Done
For too many of us, big ideas stay in our heads or our notebooks and never become reality. Charlie Gilkey’s Start Finishing: How to Go From Idea to Done teaches you how to finally achieve the things you’ve always imagined by turning your dreams into concrete, completable projects. Gilkey provides practical frameworks to help you overcome procrastination, work through psychological barriers, and focus your efforts on purposeful, meaningful work.
Gilkey is an author, speaker, and business coach who specializes in personal productivity and effective leadership. As the founder of Productive Flourishing, he’s spent over a decade helping entrepreneurs, creatives, and professionals accomplish meaningful work. Gilkey’s expertise comes both from his experiences as a logistics officer in the US Army and from his studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he earned a PhD in philosophy.
We’ll start this overview of the book Start Finishing: How to Go From Idea to Done by explaining Gilkey’s definition of a project and why designing and committing to a project is a fundamental step toward achieving your goals. We’ll then explore how you can make the most of your resources and work them into a realistic plan of action. Finally, we’ll discuss how to wrap up a major project and get ready to move onto your next important goal.
Going From Goals to Projects
Gilkey begins by exploring the fundamental human struggle between goals and achievements: Many people find themselves trapped in a cycle of having meaningful and exciting ideas, but never seeming to make progress on them. This happens because ideas aren’t things that can be completed—you must first turn them into projects with concrete objectives and endpoints.
We’ll discuss projects versus authentic projects, common roadblocks that may be stopping you from starting or finishing an important project, and the importance of committing yourself fully to a project.
Projects and Authentic Projects
Gilkey defines a project as any endeavor that takes a significant amount of time, effort, and focus to complete. For example, in a professional setting, compiling a weekly report isn’t really a project (it would be more accurate to call it a task). However, earning a promotion could be a project if that’s a goal you consistently work toward.
While Gilkey’s methods can empower you to complete any kind of project, he adds that not all projects are created equal. Realizing your full potential, and thereby finding success and happiness in life, requires you to finish authentic projects. This means doing work that’s deeply meaningful to you, aligned with your unique talents and passions, and with the potential to make a positive change in the world.
Also note that authentic projects don’t only exist in professional settings. You can design such projects in any area of your life, from personal creative pursuits to community initiatives like a neighborhood cleanup crew. In short, any goal with deep personal significance is a chance to create an authentic project.
Overcoming Psychological Barriers
In his discussion of projects and authentic projects, Gilkey identifies several mental barriers that prevent you from making progress, as well as skills you can practice to overcome them.
One common barrier to finishing projects is poor planning (or not planning at all). This causes you to become mentally paralyzed because you can’t see how to get from your project’s starting point to its end point. Gilkey also says that you may be unknowingly sabotaging yourself with negative thoughts—you’re holding yourself back with your ideas about what’s possible or what you’re capable of.
To overcome these internal roadblocks, the author urges you to practice several productivity-focused skills. The first is intentionality: being clear about what your goals are and how, specifically, you plan to achieve them. The next is self-awareness, which means building a clear understanding of your own strengths, weaknesses, habits, and limitations. The third skill is bravery, which Gilkey defines as the willingness to take action in spite of your concerns and knowing that you might fail. Finally, he suggests honing your self-control: the willpower and stamina to put forth consistent effort for however long it takes to turn a dream into a completed project.
Choosing and Committing to a Project
Gilkey also addresses the emotional complexity of choosing and committing to a project. People instinctively understand that time is finite and that choosing to do a certain project also means choosing not to do other things with that time. This can cause you to avoid committing to any project because you’re reluctant to leave other ideas and dreams behind.
Gilkey says you can escape from that mental trap by actively and intentionally curating your project list, letting go of ideas that no longer serve your goals. Doing so involves honest self-reflection: You must think seriously about how important each of those ideas is to you, and be willing to write off the ones that don’t align with your current priorities and aspirations. Though difficult and uncomfortable, this process will allow you to give your full attention to your most important ideas.
Remember: You Can’t Give 100% to Everything
Gilkey notes that, by definition, you can’t give your all to multiple projects at the same time. However, you’ll naturally want all of your projects to succeed, whether they’re authentic projects or not. For example, you can’t just stop doing your job whenever you find something more personally meaningful to work on.
To better manage your commitments and enable as many of your projects as possible to succeed, the author recommends breaking down your concept of success into three categories. The first type of success is a small success, meaning what you did was “good enough.” That is to say, your work was competent, but you’re probably not especially proud of it. A medium success means that you went beyond the bare minimum and did something you can be proud of. Finally, a great success means that you gave your all and achieved something remarkable.
Next, Gilkey offers two further insights. First, each level of success requires a proportionate amount of time and effort. So, a small success only takes a relatively small amount of time and energy, while a great success requires a great deal of both. Second, not everything needs to be a great success. It’s OK to stop at “good enough” on projects that aren’t especially meaningful to you and save your best work for authentic projects that reflect your talents and goals.
Planning Your Project
When it comes to project planning, Gilkey emphasizes two elements: making the most of limited resources, and developing a realistic plan with a reasonable deadline.
Make the Most of Your Resources
Recall that a lack of resources was one of the five common barriers to completing a project. It’s also the only barrier that’s rooted in physical and logistical limitations as well as psychological ones.
However, Gilkey says that you probably have more resources at your disposal than you think. Therefore, overcoming this barrier is a matter of finding the right people to support you, and spending your project’s budget—however large or small it is—where that money will have the greatest impact.
Make the Most of Your People
Gilkey says there are four kinds of people who will naturally want to support you as you work on an authentic project. Finding people from these four categories will enable you to create an effective team to boost your productivity, as well as providing you with the support and motivation you need to see your project through.
Let’s look at the four types of people Gilkey urges you to find.
1. Mentors: People who have already done what you’re trying to do, or something similar. They have experience and knowledge that you lack, so they can provide useful guidance to help you avoid pitfalls and achieve your goals. While professional advisers and coaches will expect to be paid for their services, you can often find people who are happy to share their insights for free.
2. Colleagues: People at roughly your level of experience and skill who are willing to collaborate with you on your project. Aside from helping you with the actual work, such people should also be willing to challenge your ideas and point out your mistakes when necessary. Note that you don’t necessarily have to pay colleagues to get their support; it’s likely they’re working on authentic projects of their own and will be open to exchanging their help for yours.
3. Advocates: People who may not have the skills to directly help with your project, but support you in other important ways. Family members and close friends will often act as advocates—for instance, by offering encouragement and emotional support, helping with day-to-day chores so that you can focus on your work, or lending you money if you need it.
4. Beneficiaries: People who stand to benefit from your project. For example, if you want to create a crew of volunteers to keep the neighborhood clean, then the people who live there are the beneficiaries; if you want to open a business or create a new product, then the people in your target audience are the beneficiaries. Because they benefit from your success, these people may be more likely to help you.
Make the Most of Your Money
Budgeting is a crucial element of project planning. Gilkey argues that almost all projects require some degree of investment—even if it’s just to buy the supplies you need—so it’s important to set a budget and keep those expenses under control.
The author encourages you to view budgeting as a useful boundary-setting exercise rather than as a restrictive constraint. The goal isn’t just to limit your spending, but for you to strategically use your resources so you can get the best returns on your investments.
For example, instead of hiring a babysitter to watch your children while you work on this project, perhaps you could arrange with some friends to take turns watching each others’ kids for free. You could then use the money you save for something directly related to your project, like upgrading your computer or hiring an assistant.
Design a Realistic Plan
Gilkey stresses the importance of making a detailed and specific plan for tackling each of your projects. By doing so, you turn vague to-do lists into concrete timelines, which will provide much-needed guidance and support as you work toward your goals.
Step 1: Break Down the Project and Arrange the Pieces
Gilkey’s first step toward making a realistic plan is to break the project down into tasks or groups of tasks that will carry you from your starting point to your goal. You may also find that those tasks can, themselves, break down into smaller tasks, so get as specific as you need to during this step. Aside from enabling you to turn a goal into a plan, this process will give you a more accurate idea of how much time and work your project is likely to take.
Once you’ve identified the individual pieces of your project, you can determine how they connect: which tasks have to be handled first, what those tasks enable you to do next, and so on. By arranging and connecting the pieces in this way, you’ll be able to come up with a logical action plan to carry you from your starting point to your goal.
Step 2: Make a Realistic Timeline
The author challenges the common approach of starting with a deadline, then working backward to create a plan. He argues that you’ll get more realistic timelines by planning based on your actual work capacity, meaning the amount of work you (and your team, if applicable) can realistically and consistently get done. In short, he argues that it makes more sense to create a deadline based on your plan, as opposed to creating a plan based on your deadline.
Gilkey also notes that projects involving more than one person will inherently have periods of downtime, and people often overlook this fact while planning. This commonly happens when team members can’t start their work until other team members finish theirs—for instance, an editor can’t do their work until a writer gives them something to edit.
So, while creating your timeline, try to anticipate these transition periods and bottlenecks. However, the author says you should also be prepared to adjust your plan and push back your deadline as issues like this arise.
What to Do After You’re Done
Gilkey stresses the importance of turning a dream into a project, as well as a realistic approach for doing so. He also provides advice for what to do after completing an authentic project. He recommends tidying up your physical, mental, and digital workspaces; reviewing your performance to find ways you can do even better on your next project; and taking care of yourself by celebrating and resting.
Clean Up After Yourself
Gilkey says that, even after your project is finished, there will be loose ends and “junk”—both physical and emotional—to tidy up. Doing this cleanup work ensures that you and your team can keep operating at peak performance in the future, rather than having to work around the remnants of old projects.
The most straightforward type of cleanup work (and often the easiest, though that depends on the type of project) is tidying up your physical workspace. This includes things like sweeping, throwing away trash, making sure your tools and equipment are clean and organized, and so on. In short, do whatever must be done to ensure that your workspace is ready for the next time you need it.
Along with cleaning and organizing your physical workspace, the author urges you to tidy up your digital workspace in the same way. This means organizing documents into clearly labeled folders, deleting duplicates and outdated versions of files, and making sure all of your documentation and notes are easily accessible in case you need to refer back to them.
Finally, Gilkey says that you’ll most likely also have some social cleanup to do after a project. This often involves following up on past conversations, fulfilling promises and obligations that you’ve made, and addressing any interpersonal problems that emerged during the project. This is important because any lingering resentments that team members have (toward each other or toward you) will become emotional “clutter,” hindering future work as surely as a workspace filled with physical clutter would.
Review Your Work
Before putting away a project for good, Gilkey urges you to take time to critically examine the project as a whole and your performance during it. This process of reflecting on your work helps turn those individual experiences into personal development. That development, in turn, will help make your next project even more successful.
He models this principle on the After-Action Reviews (AARs) used in the military. The AAR process involves asking clear and specific questions about what you just went through. For example: What parts this project went well? What changes did you need to make along the way? What new skills or knowledge did you gain? What habits and practices were particularly effective?
Celebrate and Rest
Finally, don’t overlook your needs. Gilkey says that you’re going to need to do two things after completing a difficult and stressful project: celebrate and rest.
Many people feel uncomfortable with openly celebrating their accomplishments, viewing it as boastful or unnecessary, but Gilkey argues that it’s an essential part of an authentic project. This is because a celebration isn’t just about recognizing your achievements, it’s also a chance to acknowledge the community that supported your project. Sharing your success strengthens your connections with your team and your supporters, and it can also serve as an inspiration to others. The author adds that a celebration can be as large or as small as seems appropriate: anything from sending a simple text message thanking everyone involved to throwing an actual party.
However, alongside the celebration, Gilkey says that transitioning between projects requires rest and reflection. This is especially true after finishing the intensely personal work involved in an authentic project. Take whatever time you need to recover from your hard work (both physically and emotionally), address any personal tasks you’ve been neglecting, and mentally prepare yourself for future endeavors.
