Hi friends, If you are facing the problem of an unfinished task or project and want to finish all those pending things, this post is for you.
Let me share with you my story and how I settle things and come up with solutions.
I am a person who wants to do a lot of things.
I have a lot of ideas; some I have implemented, some are in progress, and some are in a pending state. But unfortunately, a lot of them are in an unfinished or stuck state. I have already implemented many ideas in the form of different projects, but nothing will be fruitful.
Things will only be fruitful when they are completed or the end product is ready for sale.
With the passage of time, these broken and partially completed projects created a mess and started to stress me. This feels like emotional baggage for me. And, unsurprisingly, I’m getting fed up. I was starting to feel disorganized and dissatisfied with myself. As a new idea pops up, an already-unfinished mess stops me. This mess is discouraging me. Why am I adding new things to an existing mess? Slowly, I just focus on office work or the only things necessary, and the rest I start to ignore. This makes me sad and dissatisfied with my life.
Later, I focus on a simple strategy that helps me to clear my mess and improve my productivity, which is listed, reviewed, and finished.
Let me talk about it as much as possible; it will be helpful to you.
Listed everything.
So the first step I took was to list everything, under a specific project name.
During that experience, I stopped working on new ideas until everything was sorted out.
Initially, I used multiple document and note-taking apps, like Google Sheets, Excel, Notion, and many more, even a paper-based notebook.
I start collecting everything in one place, such as an Excel sheet. You can use any of your choices.
My collection has the following things:
- Dates, such as the day I initiated the project,
- What was the last task I completed to date?
- What are sub-tasks?
- What is the state of the project?
You can follow a different workflow. One of my favorites is Getting Things Done by David Allen. Second recently, but more important for digital note-taking apps. That is the Para method.
Review and reassess
Listing everything in one place helps me remove unnecessary mental baggage. Many times in life, when there are a lot of things going on in mind, the best way to list them down on paper is in Excel, Google Sheets, or any note-taking app. It will help us get a clear picture.
So I listed everything in a single repository and add each project’s completion percentage.
Upon completion of this single repository, I ensured there was nothing left on my project list pending. Then I rework each project and divide it into subtasks for more clarity.
After that, I re-accessed the status of each project.
- What is completed?
- What is pending?
- How much work is necessary to complete each task or project?
I break down access into three groups: less than 30 percent completed, 60 percent completed, and more than 80 percent completed.
Mark it done:
Marcus Aurelius once said, “Ask yourself at every moment: Is this necessary?”.
Every thing or idea has time. It is possible that any idea I worked on for the project is no longer useful. I started to ask this question on each project. Is this necessary? If you find the project now of no use, simply mark it as finished and scrap it.
Before moving forward with the projects that are still worthy, I review the definition of done.
In the famous book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey mentioned that highly effective people begin things with an end in mind. It means they have a clear picture of the finished product or point where they marked that the project or task is completed.
If you did not define when you marked that project or task as finished, please do so. Define it. After defining the finished line, re-access each project. There is a possibility that some projects are already complete.
All projects that are less than 30 percent complete should be considered scrap.
All those projects, which are more than 60 percent, ask the question: Is this necessary? Is it still worth it? If the answer is no, discard them.
All the projects that have been completed—more than 80 percent—need to be completed. Whether they are worth it or not, they must be completed.
After the completion of this exercise, my mind is clear about what I need to do and what projects are already finished or completed.
Instead of starting to work on new ideas, I started focusing on projects that I needed to complete.
Start implementing the Getting Things methodology.
For new projects and ideas, I started working on the Getting Things Done methodology by David Allen.
One of the book’s key ideas is that our mind is an idea-making machine. It was not there to hold them. Instead of keeping them in mind, note them down somewhere.
So I make a Google sheet, and there is whatever idea I got, not it down in the sheet with the name “Inbox.”. This helps me to clear my mind so that ideas are noted down. I will start working on them later.
Hi friends, I hope you like this post.
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