Start More Than You Can Finish by Becky Blades

I’m reading Start More Than You Can Finish, by Becky Blades, which I believe I found through Tracy Durnell’s page documenting her explorations into creative process.

I was instantly intrigued by the title, having also read Charlie Gilkey’s Start Finishing, which obviously has some similar themes but focuses on the need to choose projects that you truly want to do and that you have the capacity for. (I’m reminded also of Tara McMullin’s What Works, and her excellent graphic explanation of how committing to too many projects can lead to feeling unsatisfied with one’s performance in all of them, which can lead to a cycle of personal dissatisfaction and increased overcommitment.)

Becky Blades isn’t really trying to differ with any of this, but she’s coming from another angle and trying to address the people who never get started. She tells us that she totaled up all of her unfinished projects of all kinds, from unsubmitted article pitches to planning parties that never happened, and that she had over 2,000 unfinished projects.

She writes:

It turns out all my unlaunched businesses, unhung art projects, never-assembled clubs, unthrown parties, unpublished essays, and assorted unfinished beginnings each served a completely complete purpose.

And concludes:

We are not the sum of our failures and missed opportunities, or our unfinished work. Nor are we made only of our big wins, the handful of things that turned out just like we wanted. We are the sum of the imaginings we ignite and our ideas acted upon. We are the curiosities we chase and the potential that they illuminate in us. We are the sum of our starts.

(I’m going to put that at the top of my /undone page, which maybe I’ll change instead to my /starts page.)

She goes on to explore the fact that most people don’t start because they don’t think they have “enough” to finish (and the enough varies—time, money, expertise, etc.) But, she says, we usually have enough to start, and we can figure out the rest from there.

I think this makes sense for ideas that truly have our names on them, the ideas that we are deeply compelled by. Our work is to discern those from the “shoulds,” because starting on all of the “shoulds” will be endless and take us away from the work we truly want to be doing.

(I just encountered a blog post by Anne Janzer with a wonderful example of this—working on things that appear to make sense even if they aren’t aligned with the work we truly want to be doing.)

For me, I know I tend to get stuck in dependencies.

As soon as I want to do something, a flowchart starts to form in my head. It usually tracks backwards and has decision trees for things that feel like they need to be urgently and permanently addressed before moving forward (hint: they really don’t.)

I end up in situations where I was thinking I should email a friend to send them a free copy of my book but instead of emailing the friend, somehow my mental flowchart has decided I first need to create a CRM database of everyone I sent my book to, plus I might want to register a different shipping address and get a custom postcard printed to include in the mailing.

It’s not that these are bad ideas. It’s just that I get into loops.

(Rarely do I draw out these mental flowcharts. I wonder if this would help?)

This evening, I spent some time learning how I can publish my book through IngramSpark for better distribution and an ebook. Right now, I have about 100 printed copies that I’m selling on my personal site and mailing out to people.

But again I got into a mental loop:

  • Do I want to put this version as-is on IngramSpark, or do I want to revise and expand it?
  • If so, how?
  • If I invested all this additional time, I should invest more time in marketing, maybe get my various email lists together?
  • Should I have a launch event?
  • Should I register my own publisher when I get a new ISBN?
  • Maybe I need a new LLC?

Way too much. Way too much!

If I feel like making the book available after selling these copies, I’ll see if I’m interested in revising it or just reformatting it for the ebook and getting a new ISBN.

Maybe I’ll have an idea for how to revisit and expand the material.

Maybe I’ll be over it already.

The only way to know is to get there.

I thought maybe for the “new version” I’d create some discussion guides, but now that’s something that wouldn’t take too long—why shouldn’t I just do it for this version?

My causal sequences are all messed up, but now that I know that I have this tendency, I can start to untangle my mental flowcharts.

Blades suggests that when you have the impulse to take an action, you can count down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and just do it (even if doing it is just writing down the idea for later,) so that you don’t lose the impulse.

This is so extraordinarily opposite to how I usually do things. I perseverate about whether to open an email now or later.

I think I’ll try it out!