I'm a much better starter than finisher, and if you've spent five minutes with me that won't surprise you. I've got massive ADHD (hence the squirrel), and new ideas show up in my head faster than I can write them down, which is a great trait right up until you count how many of them are actually done.
The squirrel tax
Starting feels amazing because the new thing has all the energy and none of the boring parts yet, and finishing is mostly boring parts. For a long time I could turn that into a personality, and to be fair people mostly found it charming. The trouble is that a CEO with a calendar full of half-built things is still a business problem, however charming it looks from the outside.
AI made it worse, because it's basically a machine for generating new ideas, and every one of them feels urgent on a Monday morning.
I also found out at 49 that I've got anxiety riding along with the ADHD, which explained more than a few things in hindsight. None of what follows is medical advice, and it's just what's working for me so far.
What it looks like in a company
The business version of this is adding a new lane before the last one has a process, an owner and a way to say no. I've done it, and from the outside it looks like energy until you notice that nothing quite finished and the core is quietly covering for the experiments. That's more or less how I almost ran two businesses into each other back in 2018, when Dynamics was the shiny thing.
Finishing is a strategy, because starting is cheap and finishing is the part that needs time, money, attention and a willingness to be bored for a while. It means choosing the core, or choosing the practice you're actually building, and giving it enough to become real instead of another experiment.
What I actually do to finish things
None of this is clever, and most of it exists because the people around me have watched me start a lot of things. Here's what's working for me right now:
- A parking lot for ideas (work in progress). Mine is mostly in my head, which I'm fully aware is less of a parking lot and more of a demolition derby #ADHD. What I'm working toward is writing the new squirrel down somewhere I trust instead of starting it, and coming back to the list later with a calmer head.
- Define done before I start. If I can't say what finished looks like, it stays on the idea list until I can.
- People who finish better than I do. I spent 20 years as the number two, so I know what it means to be the person who closes the loop, and now I lean on the people around me who are wired that way.
Willpower has never been my strong suit for boring things, so most of this is about making the finish line visible enough that the squirrel wants to get there too.
A squirrel is fine if it fits
I'm not trying to stop having ideas, and I don't think I could if I tried. A squirrel is fine when the idea actually fits the plan, and it gets expensive when it's just the same shiny thing with a better name.
If you're restless this week, that might be the whole job: pick the thing already in motion and close it out before you name a new one. I'd tell you about the other three posts I started before this one, but I haven't finished them yet.
So what's the one thing you started that deserves a finish this month?
