The Last Push

I’ve been noticing a pattern in how I work.

I’m great at starting things. I enjoy the early stage of every project where everything is open and flexible.

I enjoy the middle stages too. The steady work. The untangling of issues. Looking for solutions. Turning up and moving forward a little.

But I have a habit of stalling near the end. Just when something is about to become real.

I’ll have an ebook that’s basically done, and instead of writing the final pages or doing the last edit, I’ll open a fresh document and start outlining a new blog. Or I’ll be polishing a draft and suddenly feel convinced I need to design a visual to go with it. Something new always seems more urgent than finishing what’s in front of me.

It looks like productivity, but most of the time it’s avoidance.

Starting feels safe because it’s private. It means deciding that it’s good enough, which is hard when you feel like you could always do better. Finishing means it can be judged.

Hanging out in the land of almost lets you delay that moment.

New ideas are very seductive at that stage. Jumping into a new project feels like progress. You are working and moving forward, but they're really just an escape hatch from the current job.

It took me a while to see this clearly. I had to catch myself mid-pivot a few times, cursor hovering over a new document, that familiar rush of possibility, before I understood what I was doing.

Over time, I’ve learned to treat that urge as a useful signal that I’m close to shipping. Instead of jumping into something new, I try to double down and finish.

I made a simple rule for myself: I can start the next thing, but only after I complete this one. Not perfectly. Just finished.

Unfinished projects pile up quietly. They hover at the edges of your attention. Finishing something creates space. Not just on your hard drive, but in your head.

And in that space, more great work can finally begin.

Three things that inspired this week’s post:

1. I found a document called “FINAL_FINAL_v7” that still isn’t final. I realised the only thing missing was about an hour of courage.
2. I finally moved my site off Kajabi and launched my new Webflow site. I’d been circling “almost ready” for months. This week, I just hit publish. That little rush reminded me what finishing feels like.
3. I get this strange moment of fear right before I hit send on my newsletter. I’ve written over a hundred blogs and still feel it. There’s always a small pause and a little voice that says, “Maybe this isn’t ready yet,” or “Maybe no one cares about this,” or “Maybe you should rewrite the whole thing.”

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