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START

Written by Juli Shulem

Starting the new year right may mean getting a solid footing on the process of ‘STARTING’ altogether. I have written about how starting helps with the finishing in a previous post on my website – so I am backing up a bit now, and addressing the ‘starting’ process itself. 

Starting is often challenging for us. No one is immune to this I have noticed.  Whether it be starting a project, a report, an employee evaluation, a research paper, or a blog post – the very idea of starting can be daunting. And it isn’t always the ‘starting’ that is the culprit – it is the emotional or mental ‘stuck-ness’ when thinking about the sheer magnitude of the project overall, right? Those thoughts of “oh wow, this is going to be a lot of work” or “I don’t have the multiple hours this will probably take to finish” or “what if I do a bad job after putting in all the time,” or the ever-famous “I don’t know what to do first.” Yeh, there are those concerns – but these are simply limiting beliefs. You probably can ascertain from previous experiences that most of those thoughts have no real foundation or legitimacy. So. Let’s Start. (Pun intended).

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How to Finish a Task

Written by Juli Shulem

Are you someone who starts a whole bunch of projects and tasks yet rarely finishes any of them? You are in excellent company! A huge percentage (89% according to a study shared in the Huffington Post) of business people don’t finish their task list.  Starting things and not getting back to them often is a result of procrastination, excessive distractions, poor planning, or simply a lack of desire. Maybe the task lost its allure along the way and you just don’t care about it anymore. That could be a problem – or maybe a sign that perhaps it didn’t need to get started in the first place. Whatever the actual reason for not finishing what you started, it can leave you feeling frustrated, overwhelmed (particularly if you have several things left undone), and even a bit like a failure. If you don’t finish tasks at work repeatedly, it could even cost you your job. 

Finishing what we start is necessary for most things in our adult lives: We might be paid only after a job is complete; filing taxes (I know – daunting!)…you get the picture. Less important tasks may not have much value in their completion, so that may have less impact on your life. If, however, you are unable to get yourself to complete the important tasks, then this will require some effort to overcome. Exercising that ‘mindset muscle’ of pushing past the resistance can take some concerted effort – but I have some ideas that should help. 

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