OK, so I´m back home, getting back to the routine (if there ever was one). As I imagined, the week-long work trip was well worth it, both professionally and personally.

(Photo of some lovely trees just outside the office I visited).

Now, it´s time for me to resume a few other things I´m doing that I want to bring to a close. And while thinking about that, I remembered this quote:

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

William James

Have you ever experienced that feeling of uneasiness when leaving tasks unfinished? Or maybe it was easier for you to notice the opposite: how good it feels to finally get them done. I read somewhere that each unfinished task we have takes away a small portion of our mental energy, as our brain is constantly remembering that it needs to finish it... Using the analogy of a computer or a mobile phone, it´s as if we had an open browser window for each pending task, consuming resources unnecessarily and slowing down the whole system.

In a way, it´s like an extended version of multitasking, which, as we already know, doesn´t really work.

And they don´t have to be big things, or even important ones. For example, today, I realized again that I have several unfinished books (due to reasons that are not relevant right now); I challenged myself to finish one of them (even if it was the shortest one), and I felt great when I accomplished that. Our unconscious mind doesn´t differentiate between big or small, important or trivial: each task we add to the list is one more burden, and each task we can tick off, an accomplishment.

By the way, you may be wondering: why do I have several unfinished books? Well, obviously, because I started reading them and never came around to finishing them, which brings me to the proposal I´d like to share with you today:

Stop starting, and start finishing.

I learned this phrase from an Agile coach a few years ago (thanks, Chris!). It´s a basic principle in certain work methodologies like Lean and Kanban, and it also works very well for Scrum (if you´re getting confused by all these strange words, don´t worry; you don´t need them to understand the idea).

The idea is very simple, yet very powerful: limiting the amount of work in progress at any given moment, so that you can focus your energy better and finish tasks more efficiently.

As I said, it´s a very simple idea; what´s not so simple is putting it into practice, among other reasons, because the motivation that often pushes us to get something started tends to dissipate afterwards and is no longer enough... (I´ll tell you more about motivation in a future article).

This is not a new idea; there´s a popular saying in Spanish that reads "quien mucho abarca, poco aprieta" ("if you hold on to too much, you lose your grip"), and in English we can convey a similar idea with "don´t spread yourself too thin".

What about you? Are there many things you have started and not finished? What can you tick off today so that your list gets lighter?