Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done pdfdrive com

Don’t wait until the squirrels come home.
I am not naturally good at data, and most of the time I hate it.
But do you know what I hate even more? Perfection. I hate feeling lost
because I don’t know which is the best way to go. I hate living in denial. And
more than anything, I hate disaster.
When we lived in Alpharetta, Georgia, a small bit of rot developed on the
corner of our roof. I’d never owned a home before, so I didn’t really know what
to do with that data. “Huh, look at that, a hole from our attic directly to the
outside world. Neat.”
Every time I mowed the backyard I would look up and see it getting larger.
For months, I watched the progress as the corner of our house disintegrated. I
had the data. There was a six-inch hole, but I didn’t do anything with it. I denied
it would be a problem because I was afraid that if I really investigated it, we
couldn’t afford to fix it.
Fortunately, the hole fixed itself. Our house was like Wolverine and had
self-healing properties. We bought that from Nationwide. Turns out they were
on our side.
Actually, what happened first was the ants. One day, we didn’t have any

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Actually, what happened first was the ants. One day, we didn’t have any
ants. The next day, there were a hundred thousand living in the corner of our
great room. Jenny was upset but the spiders sure weren’t. They immediately set
up webs in the corner twenty feet above our couch. Now, in addition to the
pulsating-ceiling ant colony, we had webs full of dead bodies. It started to look
like an insect Burning Man up there, with different species of bugs showing up
to set up camp around the ant buffet.
I might have ignored the ants forever—denial is a powerful thing—but the
squirrels were difficult to write off. A squirrel family decided to move into the
attic. You’ll never sleep more peacefully than when you can hear a tree rat
scurrying around right above your head in the attic, one with never-ending fangs.
Did you know that? The reason squirrels chew on metal on your roof is that their
teeth never stop growing. That’s not terrifying at all.
What was a hundred-dollar hole turned into thousands of dollars of repair,
especially after I tried to catch the squirrels and had a friend step through our
bedroom ceiling. I pointed out to Jenny the convenience of being able to see
what’s in our attic without evening leaving our bed, but she didn’t view the hole
that way. She’s closed-minded like that.
Don’t wait until the squirrels move in to listen to data.
Data kills denial, which prevents disaster.
Perfection will tell you that your data must be complicated. If you dare to
gather some, it will have you tracking every ounce of water, second of time, and
vowels used in the book you’re writing.
Don’t.
Our goal in this chapter is to get one to three points we can use. For what?
To finish, which is what we’re about to do.
Actions:
1. Write down one to three things you can track concerning your goal.
2. Review a goal from the past to see if you can learn anything.
3. Find your airplane. What’s the way you work best?
4. If you’re already in the middle of a goal, decide if you need to adjust your
goal, timeline, or actions.

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