Book Summary: Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through, Taking Action, Executing, & Self-Discipline

I’ve been feeling off-track for the past 6–7 months now. Chancing upon this book was the best thing that ever happened to me. This book is written by Peter Hollins, Author and Researcher at petehollins.com. This summary is directly adopted from his book.

Stop Thinking, Just Execute

• The art of following through is something that allows you to create the life that you actually want instead of settling for the life you currently have.
• It can be said to be composed of four parts: focus, self-discipline, action, and persistence — all equally important.
• However, it’s not just as easy as knowing you have to do it and thus doing it. There are powerful reasons we don’t finish what we start and follow through very often. These reasons can generally be split into two camps: inhibiting tactics and psychological roadblocks.
• Inhibiting tactics are the ways we plan against ourselves without even realizing it. They include (1) setting bad goals, (2) procrastination, (3) indulging in temptations and distractions, and (4) poor time management.
• Psychological roadblocks are the ways we don’t follow through because we are unconsciously protecting ourselves. These include (1) laziness and lack of discipline, (2) fear of judgment, rejection, and failure, (3) perfectionism out of insecurity, and (4) lack of self-awareness.

Staying Hungry

• How do we stay hungry and motivated? By delving deep and really asking what internal and external motivators you have at your disposal — a task that is rarely performed.
• External motivators are when we leverage other people, places, and things to push us into action. For the most part, these are when we want to avoid negative consequences involving other people, places, and things. These methods include accountability partners and groups, putting money down upfront, and self-bribery.
• Internal motivators are when we look at how we stand to benefit and improve our lives. These are universal needs, drives, and desires that are easy to lose track of. The easy way to find these is to answer a set of questions that directly asks things such as how am I going to benefit from this and how does my life stand to improve from this?
• It’s only through answering these questions that you realize what you are neglecting. Anything we want to accomplish has an associated opportunity cost. We must sacrifice, even if we are sacrificing our ability to lie on the couch and watch television.
• We can deal with this mental obstacle by playing with the cost-benefit ratio so the cost is minimized or the benefit is maximized. Motivation has been shown to work best when we are reminded of it — otherwise, out of sight, out of mind.
• Thus, you should have cues you’re your motivations all around you — but make sure to keep them distinct and memorable, use all five senses (even taste), and make sure to change and switch them periodically to avoid growing used to them and forgetting them.

Create a Manifesto

• A manifesto is nothing more than a set of rules to follow every day. We might hate rules, but rules take the guesswork out of our days and give us guidelines to follow. They make matters black and white, which is helpful to following through because there is simply no other choice.
• Rule 1: Are you acting out of laziness? If so, is this a characterization you want about yourself?
• Rule 2: Three major tasks a day, maximum. Differentiate between important tasks, urgent tasks, and simple wasted motion.
• Rule 3: Create daily limitations and requirements for yourself. These keep you within the bounds of what you know you need to do. These are also the building blocks of good habits.
• Rule 4: Sometimes we lose sight of what we want to accomplish. Thus, reaffirm your intentions by stating “I want,” “I will,” and “I won’t” statements.
• Rule 5: Try to look into the future, 10 minutes, hours, and days at a time. Do you like what you see when you consider not following through? Is it worth the benefit to the current self at the expense of the future self? Probably not.
• Rule 6: It’s just 10 minutes, right? So if you want to quit, it’s just 10 minutes. And if you need to wait, it’s just 10 minutes.

Follow-Through Mindsets

• Following through is 100% mental, which means it’s probably a good idea to talk about the mindsets you attempt to embody.
• Mindset 1: It’s all worthwhile. If you feel that your hard work will get you somewhere, you belong and are as good as anyone else, and you feel impact toward your overall goals, execution is easier to stick with.
• Mindset 2: Become comfortable with discomfort. Everything you want to do will have elements of discomfort, unless you just want to watch television all day by yourself. Thus, becoming used to this feeling allows you to tackle what you want without fear.
• Mindset 3: Without following through, there is no learning. Only when you finish something can you evaluate yourself and correct your errors. Embody an information-gathering mindset.
• Mindset 4: The detrimental power of stress and anxiety can’t be overstated. Even being in a poor mood is dangerous to your productivity and follow-through. Be aware and take proactive measures to modulate your stress levels.

The Science of Smashing Procrastination

• Tackling procrastination is similar to pushing Sisyphus’s stone. You can beat it back for a bit, but it’s so natural that you will never be fully rid of it.
• The problem is typified by time inconsistency, where we comprise two selves that don’t have overlapping desires — one wants gratification in the future and the other wants it right now.
• Temptation bundling is an effective method to battle procrastination. It consists of combining your unpleasurable tasks with something pleasurable. This mainly works because you are battling time inconsistency and giving both selves what they want simultaneously. Start easy and small.
• Procrastination thrives off inertia. Therefore, you need to make the path to motion and action as easy as possible. Then eventually you can gain momentum — the opposite of inertia.
• Sometimes beating procrastination just requires a kick in the pants. Fear and productive paranoia can do that to you — if you are so fearful of the negative repercussions you will face, then you will certainly be spurred into action. But this is not a method to use very frequently.

No-distraction Zone

• Minimize your distractions in your environment. It turns out that out of sight is out of mind with distractions, so don’t keep anything stimulating near your workstation otherwise your willpower will slowly deplete itself.
• Create default actions wherever possible. This is where the easiest and lowest resistance past for you is the path you want the most. This is also done through curating and designing your environment for productivity.
• Singletasking is an important concept because it definitively proves the flaws of multitasking. When you switch from task to task, you create attention residue. This means it takes a while for you to adjust to each new task, even if you were already familiar with it. You can eliminate this by singletasking, and also by batching, which is when you do all similar types of tasks together to capitalize on your mental efficiency.
• A don’t-do list can be just as powerful as a to-do list because we are rarely told what to ignore. As a result, these distractions or sneaky time-suckers can invade our space without us even knowing we are being duped. Include tasks you can’t move forward on, make progress on, or help.
• The 40–70 rule is when you beat inaction through the amount of information you seek. If you have less than 40%, don’t act. But if you have 70%, you must act. You’ll never have 100%, and chances are, 70% is more than sufficient — the rest you learn along the way, anyway.
• Finally, you might want to do nothing from time to time. This is rest and relaxation — but you should think of it as mental recovery. What does an athlete do between races or matches? You got it — they recover so they are primed to work again when necessary.

Deadly Pitfalls

• False hope syndrome is when you expect that you will be able to change or improve to an unrealistic degree. When you inevitably fail to meet this mark, there is a very real backlash that results in you being even less motivated and disciplined than before you started.
• To beat this, set proper expectations based on your history and understand the difference between goals and expectations.
• Overthinking is sneaky because it feels like action and it even feels productive. But it’s not. Overthinking is when you fixate and can’t seem to take the first step toward action. Zero in on the details that matter, deliberately ignore everything else, and you’ll feel much more clarity.
• Worrying is when you fixate on something and inevitably start drawing out the negative scenarios and pitfalls. However, worrying is also when you fixate on things you can’t control while ignoring what you can control — the present. The solution is to focus on what you can do right now and only right now.
• Do you know yourself? Well, what about in terms of productivity and how you work and produce the best? You can consider time of day, environment, setting, and so on. But you should consider that knowing yourself is also the ability to look at yourself and understand why you may have failed or come up short. It is the ability to self-diagnose and be self-aware.

Daily System for Success

• Systems are sets of daily behaviors. It doesn’t have to be more complex than that. Systems stand in stark contrast to goals because goals are one-off accomplishments, while systems emphasize consistency and long-term success.
• Keep a scoreboard for everything large and trivial. This keeps you motivated and striving toward growth and progress.
• Manage your time better by understanding how long things will take in reality and accounting for your own quirks and inefficiencies.
• Lower your transaction costs by making undesirable behaviors inconvenient and unwieldy while making desirable behaviors convenient and easy.
• Gather all of the information and materials you need all at once and before you get started. This allows you to work interruption-free and gather moments.