Book SummaryStart Finishing, by Charlie Gilkey

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Start Finishing

For too many of us, big ideas stay in our heads or our notebooks and never become reality. In Start Finishing, Charlie Gilkey teaches you how to finally achieve the things you’ve always imagined by turning your dreams into concrete, completable projects. He provides practical frameworks to help you overcome procrastination, work through psychological barriers, and focus your efforts on purposeful, meaningful work.

Gilkey is an author, speaker, and business coach who specializes in personal productivity and effective leadership. As the founder of Productive Flourishing, he’s spent over a decade...

Start Finishing Summary Going From Goals to Projects

Gilkey begins by exploring the fundamental human struggle between goals and achievements: Many people find themselves trapped in a cycle of having meaningful and exciting ideas, but never seeming to make progress on them. This happens because ideas aren’t things that can be completed—you must first turn them into projects with concrete objectives and endpoints.

(Shortform note: The reason you can’t “do” an idea—which is really a goal without a plan—is that it lacks specific, actionable steps. Studies in neuroscience have found that complex actions, such as working toward a long-term goal, have both emotional and intellectual prerequisites. What Gilkey describes here is a situation where you’ve met the emotional requirement (you’re motivated to realize your dream) but not the intellectual one. In much simpler terms, you can’t act on your idea because you haven’t yet figured out how to do that.)

In this section we’ll discuss projects versus authentic projects, common roadblocks that may be stopping you from starting or finishing an important project, and the importance of committing yourself fully to a project....

Start Finishing Summary Planning Your Project

Now that you’ve learned about authentic projects and the importance of fully committing to one, we’ll discuss Gilkey’s approach to project planning. He emphasizes two elements for this planning stage: making the most of limited resources, and developing a realistic plan with a reasonable deadline.

Make the Most of Your Resources

Recall that a lack of resources was one of the five common barriers to completing a project. It’s also the only barrier that’s rooted in physical and logistical limitations as well as psychological ones.

However, Gilkey says that you probably have more resources at your disposal than you think. Therefore, overcoming this barrier is a matter of finding the right people to support you, and spending your project’s budget—however large or small it is—where that money will have the greatest impact.

Make the Most of Your People

Gilkey says there are four kinds of people who will naturally want to support you as you work on an authentic project. Finding people from these four categories will enable you to create an effective team to boost your productivity, as well as providing you with the support and motivation you need to see your project...

Start Finishing Summary What to Do After You’re Done

So far we’ve gone over the importance of turning a dream into a project, as well as a realistic approach for doing so. In this final section we’ll discuss Gilkey’s advice for what to do after completing an authentic project: Tidy up your physical, mental, and digital workspaces; review your performance to find ways you can do even better on your next project; and take care of yourself by celebrating and resting.

Clean Up After Yourself

Gilkey says that even after your project is finished, there will be loose ends and “junk”—both physical and emotional—to tidy up. Doing this cleanup work ensures that you and your team can keep operating at peak performance in the future, rather than having to work around the remnants of old projects.

The most straightforward type of cleanup work (and often the easiest, though that depends on the type of project) is tidying up your physical workspace. This includes things like sweeping, throwing away trash, making sure your tools and equipment are clean and organized, and so on. In short, do whatever must be done to ensure that your workspace is ready for the next time you need it.

(Shortform note: In *[The Life Changing Magic of...

Shortform Exercise: Start Planning Your Project

Now that you’re familiar with Gilkey’s ideas about why and how to turn your big ideas into workable projects, take some time to start designing an authentic project of your own.

What’s one authentic project that you'd like to pursue? What life goal would you like this project to accomplish?