Why It Is Easy to Start New Things & Difficult to Finish Them
Why It’s Easy to Start New Things & Difficult to Finish Projects
Beginning the Process & Introducing the Completion
I’ve been procrastinating and delaying writing this essay for over a week now. I know what to write about and have for a while now, but it’s something else that has stopped me. More so than the labour itself, it’s been a mental abyss to cross - an abyss torn through reality by a simple realisation: I’m almost done.
When I began writing these essays and posts, I set a goal. I wanted to write 100 of them, one every week. Now it’s been nearly two years since I wrote the first one, and with this one being finished, there are only two more to write. This post won’t be the one reflecting on that journey; instead, it’s about one of the hardest parts of any journey: the end.
First steps aren’t always easy, but sometimes they can be, and once that first step has been taken, then the very beginnings of any journey are usually filled with excitement and eagerness. You’re filled with energy, motivation, and you’re having fun. There are a few blocks, challenges and hinders that appear so early on in any journey.
Myself and many artists, I’m sure, know that it can be very easy to start new projects, often before finalising older ones. The beginnings are filled with potential, and they can go in any direction; you’re not limited in any capacity other than by your own imagination. As a journey or project progresses, you start to encounter difficulties, and as it begins to really take shape, you start to be limited, and the free form now needs to suit the foundations that have already been set.
The further progress is made, the more this becomes true, until you arrive at the very end where all the fun and excitement of a project has been replaced with anxiety, fears and doubts. You begin to postpone, procrastinate or start new projects even though you know there’s not a lot left, maybe you know exactly what to do to call it finished, or perhaps you endlessly add new things to your to-do list so you have an excuse to keep working on it rather than completing it.
Why is it easy to start new projects, and why can it be so difficult to finish the things we’ve already begun? The first step to solving this potential issue is to understand and answer these questions. Let’s take it from the beginning by looking at the start of something new.
New Beginnings & The Promise of the Unknown
New things are unknown, and the unknown holds a limitless promise of potential. It can be anything, and before we find out what that potential is, it’s raw, unfiltered and unlimited power. We’re natural-born explorers and inventors, and we delve into the unknown in search of treasure, and sometimes that journey itself is more rewarding than the troves of wealth we find.
There are many aspects of new beginnings that naturally appeal to us, and many reasons why we associate strong positive feelings with starting something new. There are 5 major aspects of a fresh start that we will look at.
- Freedom
When you begin something new or walk a new path, you’re not limited by anything, really. You can paint whatever you want, use whatever colours you like, or when you open a blank page in a journey, you get to decide in that moment if you want to write a poem, an essay or begin a novel. At the beginning of anything, you have complete freedom, you decide those first steps or if you want to take a leap, or if you just want to stand still.
That freedom dissipates as a project begins to take shape. When you begin writing, you might become limited by theme, or wording, even language - but none of those confinements exists in the beginning stages of any project. Anything and everything fits because there’s nothing else it has to complement or work with.
This freedom is what allures people to move, or to start new things, to leave the old behind and to get a fresh start in a place, project or work where they have the freedom to reinvent themselves or their work.
- Reinvention
When you begin something new, you are given the opportunity to not only reinvent your work but also yourself. Whereas once a project has begun, you’re limited to what that project needs. The only way to reinvent a currently developing and working project is by starting over, and then you begin anew. Reinvention is, by its essence, a new start.
While it could be argued it’s part of the freedom something new offers, reinvention is a unique and strong enough trait of new beginnings that it has driven people for thousands of years. It’s a big reason why people move away and settle in new places. To reinvent themselves and to become a version of themselves they like better.
- Inspiration
When you begin a new work, your motivation and drive are largely driven by inspiration: you start something new because you feel inspired to do so. The motivation is largely internal, and you enjoy the process itself. As you continue working on something, this inspiration fades, and you have to eventually replace it with discipline. If you don’t, then you might find yourself only surrounded by unfinished work.
Inspiration comes, and it goes; it can’t usually be called upon, but there are practices to cultivate and help give the space necessary for inspiration. But it can be difficult to conjure up inspiration for a project you’ve been working on for a while, whereas when starting something new, you’re almost always bound to have been at least somewhat inspired.
- Exploration
Another important aspect of the fresh start is the opportunity for exploration. Curiosity and the willingness to experiment and figure stuff out are innate to almost all human beings. For as long as we have existed, we have asked questions, ventured out on arduous journeys, and we have explored not only our own planet but also the solar system. Exploration requires novelty, and you can’t do much exploring on something which is known to you.
When you first start a project, you’re discovering the project yourself as well. When writing, you follow the journey like the reader, and when painting, it’s a similar story. This is a great joy and a big motivator for many.
When you first start working on a new project, you don’t really know where it will go, and you enjoy the process of figuring that out. You immerse yourself in exploration, and that innate human curiosity is not only satisfied, but it’s a strong drive and motivator to continue working.
- Escapism
The fifth and final part of all new beginnings we’re talking about today is the use of a fresh start as an escape. A fresh start provides a lot of positives, and anything that gives something positive can be used as a way to avoid negative feelings or consequences.
When a project gets tough or you’re met with creative blocks, it’s natural to want to start a new project or start over completely. There are often more positives associated with a fresh start than finalising a project. As mentioned, people also look to fresh starts for things outside of their work or artistic pursuits - it can be about their life at times. Sometimes the desire for freedom or reinventing oneself comes from the desire to escape one’s current living situation.
Using a fresh start as an escapism isn’t necessarily a positive trait; in fact, it can be pretty negative. Because escaping from problems usually doesn’t solve them. That desire or even need to escape, though, is something which makes new beginnings very alluring to a lot of people.
There are many reasons why someone might want to escape from a currently developing project, especially towards the end of it. Just as we’ve focused on 5 positive traits to beginnings, we’re now looking deeper at 5 more negative aspects of finishing something.
Old Conclusions & the Guarantee of the Known
Whereas a new beginning whispers promises of what can be, the conclusion loudly declares and guarantees what is. Approaching its finalisation, a project shifts from a journey of freedom and potential into a closed form of completion, and it asks for refinement, not invention. When you greet your friend, you’re happy because you’re looking forward to your time together, but as you say goodbye, you’re admitting yourself to solitude again.
Goodbyes can be painful, and most of us have stronger negative feelings towards the end of things than positive ones. These aspects can make finishing projects difficult and cumbersome, even painful, and it gives us reason to avoid closing the things we start.
- Confinement
The first aspect of concluding a project is the antithesis of the first positive trait in starting a project. Because when starting something, you have complete freedom of it - but when wrapping up something, you’re confined to what the project has developed into over time.
Your journey is determined for you: you know what you need to do, where to go, and what the next step is. Sometimes you don’t, and that can also make finalising a project difficult, and the reason for that block and uncertainty sometimes is the creative confinement you find yourself in.
Your freedom is stripped away, and you have to bite the bullet and do the boring work. You can’t exactly rely on inspiration entirely. However, there is real artistic value to confinement and restrictions as well, and if approached with an open mind, you can really turn this lack of freedom into a good source of inspiration for your imagination. We can be paralysed by choice, and restricting ourselves can also be liberating. For some, however, confinement is a cause of stress and worry more than it is a source of creative stimulation.
- Worries
There are a lot of things to worry about - will it be good enough? Will it be finished on time? What if I ruin it, or what if I can’t finish it? Will it reach the expectations you set from the start? All these uncertainties come to the forefront towards the end of any project. This worry isn’t just a mental anguish, but it can be a real physical response from your nervous system.
This response from the nervous system is caused and reinforced by habit. When we crunch for a tight deadline, we increase our cortisol for energy, causing feelings of anxiety and worry but also boosting productivity. When we finish a creative project and we share it with the world, we learn from that response, and our nervous system learns to react to that anticipation of judgment with worry, and it begins to physically associate the end of a project with those feelings.
Our nervous systems have, for thousands of years, been used to alert us of dangers, even just perceived danger, and while there might not be any real danger, that perceived danger and worry of consummating a project can cause a real physical change in our bodies.
These feelings of discomfort and anxiety lead to avoidance, causing us to procrastinate and focus on other things to avoid triggering our brains into reacting negatively to the end of a project. A lot of us build up this response unconsciously and over many years by small choices we make when it comes to how and when we finalise our projects and what happens when they do conclude.
- Disconnect
The reason we often feel a disconnect is that we don’t feel ready, and there’s a disconnect between ourselves and the work. Maybe we’re not ready to let go, maybe the project grew beyond our current skills or current feelings, and we, for one reason or another, feel a disconnect with the project.
When we begin a project, we feel connected to it; we started it because we felt motivated to do so, but as it runs its course, those feelings can change. The circumstances for the change may be internal or external, but for one reason or another, as time passes, so does our relation to a place, project or even person. This change isn’t negative in and of itself, but when it causes a disconnect and a rift, it becomes negative because it holds us back from finishing something.
- The Fear of Separation
While this part about the difficulties concerning finishing things could be clumped together with the other worries, it’s a particularly strong fear which makes up a significant discomfort when it comes to finalising things. Saying goodbye isn’t easy when it’s something you love, and if there’s a particular project we love working on, we might fear that the next one won’t be as enjoyable or not as good, and we just want the good times to last.
It’s like finishing a really good book or saying goodbye to a good friend; there’s an emptiness that fills us for a while after something has been accomplished. The fear of that emptiness is what can hold us back from completing something; we cling to a project knowing that we won’t have to part with it if we never conclude it.
- Hindsight and Foresight
There’s a suspension between almost being done with something and having gone through so much already. Those last meters in the race can be so tiring, mentally as well as physically, because you’ve already spent a lot of energy getting there, and also seeing visibly that you’re not quite there really makes it hit home.
When you begin working on something, you don’t know how much work it will be; it could be a lot or little, but as you approach the end, you have both hindsight and foresight with you - you realise how much you’ve done and you know how much is left. I’ve always hated Thursdays for this reason, because you’re tired from the week, and it just feels like a filler day before Friday.
Friday is often shorter, and you know exactly that the weekend is about to arrive - but Thursday is just like a 24-hour block from the good times. All projects follow the same cyclical course as the seasons and weeks, and at some point, towards being done with the work week in terms of your artistic project, you will reach a Thursday, and those have always been worse than Mondays for me.
Final Words & Conclusions
It’s often easier to start a project than it is to finish one, and there’s a multitude of reasons for that. There are, of course, both pros and cons to both starting and finalising something, but if you’re anything like me, you struggle more with the latter. We’ve identified 5 different aspects to both the start and the end, focusing on the positives for the beginnings and the possible negatives of the conclusions.
Even now, I’m struggling to wrap up and finish this essay, and in a way, the best way is perhaps to let the end be a new start. So instead of focusing on what we just went over, let me tell you that the next essay will discuss how we move past these difficulties and actually finalise projects.
Because beginnings of new artistic projects, hobbies or relationships might be fun and exciting, but it’s deepening, polishing and completing the tasks we set out to do that really mean something, and leaving business unfinished is one way to live life, but not the most fulfilling way, and if you want to pursue art or something creative seriously you have to get serious about finalising your projects.
We love new beginnings and the start of good things, but we also want closure. Things in this life are temporary, and few things survive the passing of time. Understanding this not only in life but also in your work is important and valuable. Closure helps us move on and helps us get to those new beginnings with a blank slate, and it allows us to leave our unnecessary baggage behind and approach something with a truly fresh set of eyes.
Keeping this introduction in mind, as we then approach the conclusion to this essay next time, we will dive deeper into how to actually finalise and complete things.
