Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done pdfdrive com

When a Plane Is More Than a Plane
Reviewing your past is one of the best ways to understand who you really are
and how you’ll work best on a goal. Keep in mind that perfectionism can’t stand
self-awareness. If you’re self-aware, you’re more likely to know and accept your
limitations, which means you won’t fall for the promise of a perfect
performance. Self-awareness might also make you want to fly more often.
I have three friends who claim they are able to finish more projects when
they are on planes than any other time. I’ve heard this type of thing from people
of all walks of life and professions.
Most people will stop right there, never questioning what that really means,
but great finishers explore the big idea behind the small one. What is it about the
plane that makes you so productive? It’s not the air quality, because you are

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plane that makes you so productive? It’s not the air quality, because you are
breathing in every type of germ all at once. Whenever I see families all traveling
with face masks on, I think, “What do you know that I don’t?”
It’s not bringing your pillow on the flight, which is the grossest thing
currently happening in air travel. I’ve never slept in my own bed and thought,
“You know what would make this better? If my personal pillow had rubbed
against a seat on an airplane.”
It’s not the beverage service. There’s nothing sadder than watching an
executive in coach who is flying to Baltimore to negotiate a $10-million-dollar
real estate deal ask for the “whole can of ginger ale.” I know I can handle it.
Please leave it with me.
It’s not the spacious seats or the 7 degrees of recline or the elbow power
struggle that every shared armrest represents. So then why are people productive
on planes?
There are several possibilities:
1. You can only bring a limited amount of work.
At your office on the ground you can work on everything all at once.
You are surrounded by filing cabinets, desks, and drawers packed with
other projects. The limited amount of carry-on space and microscopic
nature of the pull-down tray eliminates distractions. You might want to
bring the flooring plans for the new building and the project scope and
your dry erase board and your laptop, but you don’t have the room. In
addition to eliminating distractions, airplanes also force you to plan and
pack deliberately. The projects you work on aren’t accidental or random.
2. The white noise helps you focus.
Planes are loud. I’m not sure if you knew that. Thrusting tons of metal
into the sky and battling gravity is apparently a difficult feat to pull off
quietly. For many people, this blanket of white noise helps them get into
the zone. It’s so loud it becomes quiet. (That might be the most kung fu
thing I say in this entire book.)
3. The Internet connection is too weak to get distracted.
I love and hate the Internet. I love it because it offers me the
opportunity to do anything. I hate it because it offers me the opportunity

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to do everything. For a lot of travelers, the spotty Internet connection
offers the forced isolation from digital distractions they might have a hard
time creating naturally on earth. You also can’t get texts on airplanes,
which is why when you land you’ll often hear people groan as waves of
messages hit their phones all at once now that there’s a signal. Game of
Thrones author George R. R. Martin creates his own disconnected setup
by writing his books on a DOS-based word processor from the 1980s.
4. There’s a well-defined deadline.
A flight is a finite, tiny thing. There is a definite conclusion. There’s
actually a set of conclusions. You have a window to work before they
board in the terminal. Then you have a few minutes while they are
loading the plane. You then have to put up your laptop and wait until you
hit ten thousand feet topull it back out. There’s even an announcement
that it’s time to put away your laptop. For most people, this is the first
time since grade school they’ve had such structure. Comedian Demetri
Martin used this deadline to make the transition between amateur
comedian and professional. “When I started, it was fun because they
[jokes] would just come to meand I’d write them down in my notebook
when they came. But when it became a job, I realized I couldn’t wait
around anymore. Planes are good because I’ll say, “OK, I’ll write 100
jokes between here and NYC/LA. No matter if they’re good.”
5. Nobody knows you.
A plane might be a great place for you to work because you’re
anonymous. Unless you’re me, and autographed all the copies of your
picture in Southwest magazine because you want the stranger in the
middle seat to know you’re doing stuff with your life. Save for the flight
attendant or a chatty seatmate who can be quieted down by making a
showy presentation of putting on your headphones, you won’t be
bothered on a plane. No one is coming into your office and saying the
biggest lie in the history of the English language: “You got a minute?”
That minute is never sixty seconds long.
By looking at a situation for a few minutes, you can get some awareness.
The next step is to turn that awareness into action.
If you realize you do great work on airplanes, you might not be able to take a

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If you realize you do great work on airplanes, you might not be able to take a
thousand flights a year to ensure you’re productive. But you can take the
principles and apply them to other parts of your life.
If, for instance, the limited amount of work helps you focus, leave the office
with only one file. If the spotty Internet connection helps you be present, turn
your phone off during the next coffee you have with a friend.
If you don’t learn what makes you work best and repeat it, you’ll never get
better.
Think about a time when you accomplished something. What were you
doing? What elements of that moment helped the most? Where were you? What
music were you listening to? What did you do before? What did you do after?
What works for me won’t work for you. The uniqueness of my goal,
intricacy of my personality, and jump-out-of-the-gym vertical leap makes us
pretty different. I can’t work at home, for instance. It makes me really depressed.
I know our goal as a country is to work from home in our pajamas, but I find
trying to work in sweatpants to be one of the saddest things ever. I’m not saying
I have to wear uncomfortable burlap pants or a tuxedo with tails, but I have to
leave the house to get anything done.
It took me two years to learn that ridiculously simple idea. I spent fifteen
years commuting to an office. I knew that rhythm. I was good with that pace.
Then I started my own company and floundered for two years at home,
frustrating my wife, overtalking to our UPS guy out of desperation for
community, and not knowing why.
Perfectionism told me that every other entrepreneur loved to work at home. I
was the only one having a hard time with it. What was wrong with me?
If I had stopped for ten minutes and asked, “How do I work best?” I would
have quickly realized that I needed a commute. It doesn’t have to be a soul-
crushing L.A. version, but I need at least a few minutes in the car to shake off
the slumber and get in the work zone. I had fifteen years of evidence that tried to
tell me that. Don’t ignore how you work best as you figure out how to finish.
Gilana Telles did a little self-evaluation the first time she went through the
30 Days of Hustle and realized she performs well with a complex system of her
own personal creation. “I completed sixty-two important tasks that I otherwise
would have pushed back and left for the last minute. I developed a chart to track
my goals by week. I created a color-coded calendar system!”
What works for her would give me a panic attack. Just the phrases “color-
coded calendar system” and “sixty-two important tasks” make me feel a little bit

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sweaty. For Gilana it worked, but only because she paid attention to her
strengths and then turned them into actions.