Insights from Refuse to Choose! A revolutionary program for doing everything that you love – Barbara Sher
Chapter Eight: I never finish anything
This chapter of Barbara’s book looks at what it means to finish a project and provides some unconventional strategies for finishing everything you start. Scanners in particular have a lot of difficulty finishing everything they start because they start so many new things.
A Scanner (Barbara Sher), or a ‘Renaissance Soul’ (Margaret Lobenstine) is a person who has multiple interests and attempts to split his or her careers and hobbies amongst them. This can be a difficult undertaking because we are expected to become specialists in a few select areas. I provided further detail about this in the article How to Succeed When you want to do everything.
If you feel compelled to try many activities perhaps you feel frustrated by the fact that you quickly get bored or distracted and move to something new. After many ideas turn into unfinished projects, we begin to lose our confidence in ourselves and wonder if perhaps we are lazy or just stupid?
The trouble, Barbara explains, is how we measure what it means for something to be ‘finished’. Looking up the definition of ‘finished’ in the dictionary, I see we have the definition: “brought to or having the greatest excellence; perfected”. No wonder we have so much difficulty finishing things!
I remember listening to a story told by Tony Robbins about a little girl who wanted all the things on her desk to be perfectly arranged, and felt very upset when they were not. “Daddy,” she asked, “why is it so hard for things to remain perfect?” Her father asked her, “If I move these crayons over here (to the middle of the desk, away from their designated area), would things be perfect?”. “No,” she said, “that would not be perfect!”. “What if I moved these books over here? (moving the books a few inches away from where they were already)”. “No, that would not be perfect either!”. “So what would it take for your desk to be perfect? Can you show me?” asked her father. She then carefully tidied up the crayons, put all the books into a neat pile in one corner and cleared away the rest of the desk. “There, now it is perfect” she said, with relief. “Is that the only way it can be perfect?” her father asked. “Yes, there is only one way!” “Well that is the problem then,” he explained, “in your mind there is only one way for things to be perfect but there are many ways to be imperfect!”
I thought of this story when reading this chapter of Barbara’s book, because certainly the topic draws a parallel: in our minds there may be only one way for things to be finished, but many ways for them to remain unfinished.
But Barbara wants to reframe how we think of projects being finished. Her definition of finished is that you have ‘achieved what you have come for’. She compares it to a bee collecting pollen from flowers – no-one attempts to tell a bee that it must perfect the collection of pollen from its current flower before moving to the next one. Once it loses interest in one flower it will simply move to another.
With the exception of the Scanners Barbara Sher calls the ‘Serial Masters’ (those people who perfect one thing and become a master at it before moving on to an entirely new interest and never revisiting the old one), most Scanners value learning new things as being more important than achieving material success. We are also very quick to learn and will get bored quickly if the challenges are not enough to hold us.
Mastery can feel tedious for those Scanners who like to learn about many things or who like to design, plan or lead, but not necessarily to implement their ideas. These people get a Bad Feeling when they think about what it would be like to continue implementing their idea until it was perfected. That is just too long and too uncomfortable. If you identify yourself as a Scanner/Renaissance Soul do you get the same Bad Feeling when you think about perfecting a skill long-term, sticking at the same thing or the same job?
On the other hand we get a Good Feeling when we start something new; reading a new book, starting a new hobby, working on a new project, going to new places, trying different jobs, talking to new people. So we chase the Good Feeling, but then we, or someone else asks “what is the point in being enthusiastic and diving in if you’re not going to achieve anything?” Sometimes it’s worse than not achieving something – we actually waste a lot of money buying all the equipment we might need for the project, just to use them once or twice and then the project gets shelved!
So what Barbara suggests, is that if you feel happy trying out new things, try out to your heart’s content. Maybe some things will hold your interest a long while, maybe other things just for a day or even an hour. That is fine. But start small, and do not feel afraid to finish whenever you want to. If you have started small, very small, then you will still have the fun of the starting process without all the expense that comes with buying a lot of equipment. Of course, if you do continue a project long-term there is no harm in starting to invest more heavily once you have already got your toes wet and you still enjoy it.
I wish I had received this advice before I had started in business in my early twenties. I was determined to achieve the best I possibly could, a wonderful goal, but I spent so much money achieving perfection in my product that my businesses only ever lost money. I then felt like a real failure and finished up the businesses. I was too scared to try again until I had worked out what I had done wrong. In reality I hadn’t done anything wrong except for spending a lot of money instead of starting small. If I had started small I could have tried a lot of different things and ramped up when I was ready.
The main thing, Barbara explains, is that it is never a problem to start things. If you are living in a way that feels right to you and keeps you excited, then you are living with integrity, even if other people have a different idea of what is right. You have a right to be proud of all the things you have done, to show them off even!
Barbara has an idea she calls the Scanner’s Finish which allows you to celebrate the things you started, while simultaneously getting that project out of your head so that you can enjoy the next one. Her idea is that if you start a project but then move on to something else and are quite sure that you will not revisit it, there is no point in having the equipment out to remind you of your loose threads. Rather than keeping all the things out in full view where you will feel guilty seeing them, gather together all the bits and pieces and put them in a box or wrap them in a parcel. Attach a label saying what the project is, what the goal was, what point in that goal you have reached, and what the next steps would be if it should ever be continued. Then walk away from the project and consider it a done deal!
If you wanted to you could even set up a shelf with all your past projects individually and attractively bundled up, perhaps with an attractive label, and I imagine a photograph or meaningful picture on the exterior. This can be your collection of life experiences. You wouldn’t need to keep everything, just a few mementos from each project, perhaps that would fit in a shoebox that can be sealed up and a label, date and a photo attached to the lid. Maybe you could then give your bundles to your children or grandchildren one day. They won’t mind if things are unfinished!
Barbara calls this the Life’s Work Bookshelf. She says “The plans and ideas that fall out of your mouth are like diamonds and rubies, but in a culture that only values immediate success, no one sees them that way. That’s why you need to carefully save them when you’re ready to move on and keep them on your Life’s Work Bookshelf. Those are your works, a record of your creativity’s travels.”
So, as you can see, if you are willing to adjust what it means for a project to be finished, it is perfectly possible to finish every project you start. Also you can start small, and start more projects! You can celebrate all of your started, unfinished and finished projects, by keeping parts of them as mementos, creating a collection of your life’s projects. Sounds like fun 
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