BirchTree

Finish the Job (Because Nobody Cares What You’re “Going to Do”)

by Matt on March 4, 2013

I’ve been working on my next website pretty nonstop (albeit part time, we all have a day job, right?) for the last month. I’m 90% done with everything and am so close to finishing I can taste it. Now I just have to finish the job.

And while I know that I am so very close to finishing this project, this last 10% is going to be harder and slower than any previous part of this project. Once I’m done, I have to be able to say “okay, this is good.” There can’t be any niggling details I have skipped over because they’re not as fun to tackle. Once I say I’m finished, I have to show it to the world.

That last part is always hard. We start everything thinking that we are going to do things better than those who have done them before. Nobody (at least, I hope nobody) starts something thinking they’ll do an okay job at it. We want to be the best, to have other people point to our work and say, “I wish I had done that.”

Maybe it’s the fear of letting myself down or my work not being accepted by the rest of the world. It’s probably that once I hit that 100% point, I will have actualized my vision and it may not live up to what I saw in my head months ago when I started working on this. There are no more excuses like “I’ll get to that later” or “the final version won’t look like that.” It’s done.

The trick is getting yourself to finish that last 10%. That’s where the magic happens; the part where you finish those little details that separate good work from great work. I have no tricks for how to get there; how you do that is completely up to you. Finishing is the difference between talking about what you want to do (which is interesting only to you) and showing off what you have done.

17 thoughts on “Finish the Job (Because Nobody Cares What You’re “Going to Do”)”

  2. With personal/side projects I also find that there are things which, when I’m 50% of the way there, I say I’ll do in v1.0.1 or v1.1. Then when I get closer to 90%, I start feeling the pain of not having those things I said I would do in a later version. I mistakenly think, "This won’t take long to add", and then I’m back down to 80%.

    Get back to 90%, drop back down to 80% again, rinse, and repeat.

  6. There are claims that Software or a project is never done. The key is to release. A lot of the junior developers fall into the trap of saying "well, I’m still gonna get comments on my work and redo some parts of it so why bother with finishing now". There will be no harnessing of the greatness of the iterative process without pushing releases. Frequently. For many reasons.

    Release versions, complete cycles and repeat. Not having new cycles might be endless, but closed cycles happens and should happen all the time.

    Very well written post.

  10. So true! I have run into many such people both professionally as well in my personal life. When working in group situations, I have just come to realize that there are the "visionaries" or the "beginners" and then there are the "finishers". Each category brings its own strengths to the table. At least when working in group situations, it pays to identify and appropriately utilize people for their strengths. Having said that, this article is a good mantra to adopt if you are concerned about your personal or professional brand, since the group/community can only help that much.

  11. Better to deliver 80% right and 100% on time than the other way around. I’ve found this to my cost. They’re not paying you to be a perfectionist, they’re payng for the product.

    If you are going to be late, contact before it gets critical, front up and your client will hold you in much higher regard than if you tried to obfuscate the fact, which is a kind of dishonesty. And we don’t do business with people we don’t trust.

    "A reputation isn’t build on what you’re going to do" – Henry Ford

    Good article.

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