Start Finishing by Charlie GilKey
I finished this book in October 2026. I recommend this book 9/10.
Why you should read this book:
This is probably the book I would give someone alongside David Allen's Getting Things Done. David's book helps you get all your loose ends together; this book helps you select and execute your most important work. It also goes beyond the process by helping you spot disruptions and failure traps that might get in the way.
Get your copy here.
🚀 The book in three sentences
Take out the “Head Trash.” Be courageous, and use SMART goals.
Build the project package. Create a timeline. Schedule it. Put a ring on it.
Celebrate the small wins. Crush distractions. Do AAR.
đź“ť My notes and thoughts
P17. Some stretching rules:
We don't do ideas—we do projects.
A project is anything that requires time, energy, and attention to complete.
We thrive by doing our best work.
Our lives and careers are marked by three- to five-year segments that can be thought of as projects.
Projects are mirrors because they reflect back to us what's really going on in our inner and outer worlds; projects are bridges because it's only by doing them that we create the paths our souls want to walk.
Every "and" aspect of ourselves requires upkeep in the form of projects.
We can create new realities for ourselves, but only when we let go of the idea that we're uniquely defective.
P27. "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." Persian poet Rumi.
P29. Every day that you make a choice to do your best work is a day you practice being courageous. Every day that you initiate or participate in a hard conversation or maintain a boundary is a day you practice being courageous. Every day that you dare to share your best work with someone is a day you practice being courageous. Every day that you lean into a "stuck and not getting anywhere" phase of work rather than run from it is a day you practice being courageous.
P30. The reality is that your smartest next step is probably the most courageous next step. We don't need more geniuses; we need more courageous people. If you're doing your best work, you will face a continual stream of chances to back down when fear shows its ugly head—and fear is strongest when it doesn't show its ugly head and instead lurks, unseen, in the background. Information, know-how, talent, or general readiness all insufficiently arm you to step forward. Courage and the faith it inspires are your only weapons and armor. Luckily, it's all you need, and the more you use it, the stronger it gets.
P34. Take out your head trash. While it's true that head trash is most powerful when you can't see it for what it is, seeing it doesn't mean it just goes away. Just because something isn't true doesn't mean that it doesn't work on you. These keys will help you clear out the head trash.
Awareness. Be aware of when self-defeating beliefs and patterns are present, and discern what's real and what's simply absorbed bullshit.
Courage. Have the backbone to challenge those beliefs, design experiments that mitigate the patterns, and accept the reality that your choices and responses have been co-creating whatever you're experiencing.
Discipline. Stick with challenging beliefs, experimenting, and taking responsibility to change; courage without discipline leads to fits and starts rather than deep change.
P37. Get your team to work with and for you. An aligned team makes the difference between rowing in circles and having the wind in your back. Given that people have their own plans and can't read others' minds, it's up to you to get them working with and for you. Here are the keys that will help with that.
Awareness. Be aware of what you really want, need, and dream to do and be; and be able to communicate this clearly to others. Doing so is harder than most people think it is.
Boundaries. Establish expectations, structures, and space to support your goals. Turn someday, someone, and sometime into a specific day, person, and time.
Courage. Be brave enough to take up space, ask for help, and stop being a martyr so people will like you.
P55. How to get organized:
Give yourself two uninterrupted hours for this exercise.
Do it somewhere other than where you work most of the time. Coffee shops and libraries are particularly good settings.
Use a pencil and paper. Use a pencil so you can erase when you need to—and you'll need to. Use paper so you don't collapse into fiddling with technology and checking stuff that doesn't need to be checked right now. Mindmapping can be more useful than a linear list, but this is not the time to learn how to mindmap if you're not familiar with the process.
List all the ideas and projects you want to do. Think beyond "professional" ideas and projects—yard and house projects, community initiatives, events with your community, traveling to Nepal, sorting your finances, or getting a puppy all count. It can be items on your bucket list, but they don't have to be bucket-list level.
Next, ask yourself the following questions and put an asterisk behind items that meet the criteria:
Which of the items wouldn't actually hurt at all if you cut them? Be on the lookout for projects and ideas that some previous version of yourself put there that aren't relevant for where you are right now. For instance, this could be a degree or a certificate to get a job you no longer want or that you already have. It could be a creative project that past-you desperately needed to prove yourself that current you no longer needs because you're no longer seeking approval.
Which of the items would you feel relieved to no longer be carrying? Pay more attention to how it will feel once it's no longer on your plate than to what you would need to do to let go of it.
Which of the items are "shoulds" or items that relate to Other People's Priorities, but you don't see how they'll directly lead to your thriving?
Which of the items are good ideas but don't relate to something that frustrates, annoys, angers, inspires, nourishes, or calls to you? You can't build the temper of your project from a good idea that doesn't have an emotional spark to start with.
Now, eliminate those!
Important! Take the shortened list and ask yourself these five questions:
Imagine that you're celebrating with a friend or loved one the most important thing you've done over the last year. If you could only pick one of the items on the list, which would it be?
Which of the items on the list causes the most gut-level anguish when you consider cutting it from the list completely? If you're not sure of what I mean by gut-level anguish, imagine your most cherished object being destroyed in a fire. Which item, if removed, causes that feeling the most?
Which of the items on the list are you most likely to wake up two hours earlier, stay up two hours later, or steal time elsewhere to create two hours to do?
Which of the items on the list, if finished, will matter the most in five years, in terms of having done it or how it sets up your future self for thriving?
Which of the items on the list is worth claiming one of your remaining "significant project" slots? Recall from the section on displacement that you have a number of significant project slots equal to (85 minus your age) divided by 5 (rounded down).
Once you have the choice, do the following three steps:
Circle the idea you've chosen to work on.
Put the date on the top of the piece of paper you've been working from so you know when you made this choice.
Take a picture of the piece of paper so you have a digital record of it and put the physical piece someplace where you'll see it a few times a week. This could be on a corkboard or whiteboard, your refrigerator, or framed on your desk.
P68. The variation of the SMART framework I recommend is:
Simple
Meaningful
Actionable
Realistic
Trackable
P72. From a practical point of view, the simplest way to convert your idea into a SMART goal is to add a piece at a time, with the following steps being the easiest order:
Verb it! State the goal with a verb that best captures what finishing the goal looks like. Examples: Move, Publish, Rework.
Time it! Think about what seems to be a reasonable amount of time to complete the goal, then double that time. Why double it? To account for the fact that we chronically underestimate how long it will take to get something done. Doubling the time will help you set a realistic goal.
Check it against relativity. I know you think you'll be able to do it faster than how long you just said if you doubled it, but remember, you'll be doing this project along with other projects, and almost all of us creative folk underestimate how long something will take and overestimate how much we'll prioritize any given goal.
Reread the goal to see if it's still simple. It will probably have some formulaic phrasing such as "Completion (Verb) (Idea) by (Date)"—for example, "Move Alex to Atlanta by June 1"—and that's a very, very good thing. Use your creativity and mental horsepower to figure out how to do the work, not to figure out what the work is.
P74. A chief challenge in converting an idea into a SMART goal is to figure out what success looks like. Let's consider three levels of success:
Small Success. Since tests are the easiest analogy, consider a small success as getting the minimum score needed to pass. The thing about small successes is that we're never really proud of accruing them, but a string of small successes done with coherence and intention can lead to much greater success down the line. So even though we may not be proud of them, they're still successes and worth celebrating.
Moderate Success. A moderate success exceeds the minimum requirements for success. While you may not be shouting from the rooftops about a moderate success, you're likely to be proud of the outcome. Moderate success is the highest level of success you can achieve with just your own effort, resources, and advantages.
Epic Success. If you're not a Millennial or younger, you can substitute extreme for epic. An epic success greatly exceeds the minimum requirements for success and is a "tell your momma" moment. It's your version of getting on The Oprah Show or winning the Super Bowl. Epic success requires you to build a team to help you get there.
P88. Build your Success Pack:
List the three to five people who are part of each group. Remember that you're looking for specific people.
For each person, brainstorm at least three specific ways they can help you or you can help them. If you can't think of at least three items, you likely have the wrong person on the list or don't know the person well enough. For your guides, perhaps list what types of questions you would like to ask them or who they may be able to introduce you to. For peers, list skills, connections, or perspectives they bring to bear. For supporters, list what work they can do to help you do yours. For beneficiaries, list what questions would reveal whether what you're doing is actually making their world better. Now you know what to phone your friends about.
Determine the frequency of communication that would be supportive for you and the project. For a default, consider a monthly pulse for your peers and beneficiaries and an at-least-weekly pulse for your supporters; guides are more as-needed and will often find you.
Let each person know they're part of your success pack. Given that it's unlikely they know what a success pack is, just let them know you're working on something and you would love their help. Based on your answers to questions 2 and 3, communicate to them how they can help and about how much you'll be in touch with them, so they know what they're agreeing to and what to expect from you. Guides are trickier because you may not be able to enroll them due to their being out of reach or no longer alive; even when they're alive, the most you might want to do is email them and let them know they're an inspiration for the project you're working on. If you have a mentor relationship with your guide, then you can enroll them as if they were a peer.
Proactively communicate with and show your work to them per the pulse established above. It's not the job of your guides, peers, and beneficiaries to follow up with you and ask how you're doing; it's your job to keep them informed and engaged. The exception here is if your guides and peers agree to help keep you accountable, in which case it may be their jobs to follow up with you if they don't hear from you on the pulse you jointly agreed to.
P90. At this point, it comes down to whether you're willing to put a ring on this project and build your team. Your natural inclination will be to get ready and then commit, but I'm asking you to do the opposite: commit so that you get ready. Without the commitment, it's unlikely that you're going to make space in the world to do your project—that's what we're turning to next.
P96. After working with thousands of people, I've experienced that most people have a good idea of how many fifteen-minute or two-hour chunks it will take to get a project done, if I ask them to think in terms of such blocks. But if I ask them how many minutes or hours something will take, they have no idea what to say. Two-hour and fifteen-minute-sized chunks are thus powerful anchors because they better track our natural attentional and habitual cycles. For convenience, I'll call a chunk of work that can be done in fifteen minutes a task and a chunk that can be done in two hours a block.
P100. Conventional verbs as well as what size of a chunk they relate to:
Quarter- or month-sized project verbs:
Rework
Develop
Strategize
Launch/Ship
Build
Publish
Kick off
Move/Relocate
Week-sized verbs that need at least one block, but probably more:
Research
Decide on
Collaborate with
Create
Plan/Design
Analyze/evaluate
Coordinate
Promote
Edit
Apply
Task verbs (15 minutes):
Email
Call
Sort
Read
Send
Check
Review
Find
Compile
Schedule
Make
Text
Fax
Print
P106. A major upshot of the Five Projects Rule is that it allows you to work from a smaller, more focused list of action items rather than trying to decode and parse the To-Do List of Doom that so many people create for themselves. Capturing and dumping action items is one activity with its own space; the Five Projects Rule is the output of processing those action items. Trying to drive your momentum from your dumping ground is like having to dig through laundry baskets every time you need to dress, without knowing which laundry basket is clean and which is dirty. Sure, you can do it, but you're setting yourself up for crazy-making and unwelcome surprises.
P122. Open flow with your project by building from your GATES:
Genius. What seems to be an expression of an inner creative force.
Affinities. What you're drawn to do.
Talents. What seems to be your native skills or capabilities.
Expertise. What you've learned through experience and practice.
Strengths. What seems to come easy to you.
P136. Use mind maps to start your Chunk-list for your Project.
P142. Draw up a Timeline for your Projects.
P167. Before starting the project, do your pre-mortem:
Have you created any no-win scenarios for yourself? How might you detangle them?
Have you picked a method of doing your project that's especially hard for you? How might you start from and leverage your GATES?
What OPP (Other People's Priorities) do you need to account for? How might you align OPP with your project?
Are there any derailers and (real) naysayers you need to account for? List them by name and how you'll address them.
Are you carrying any projects that you can let go of to keep them from bogging you down?
P191. If you're in a groove with your momentum planning, it typically doesn't take that long to plan because of the Five Projects Rule:
Daily planning—the night before or first thing in the morning before checking email. Making your plan before checking email helps prevent OPP (Other People's Priorities) from driving your plan. This can typically be done in less than fifteen minutes.
Weekly planning—Sunday night or first thing Monday morning before checking email. This can typically be done in less than thirty minutes.
Monthly planning—the weekend before the month starts or the first Monday of the month. This may require a focus block if you haven't been doing your weekly momentum planning.
Quarterly planning—the week before the quarter starts. Quarterly planning often takes multiple passes if you haven't been doing your monthly momentum planning.
Annual planning—the month before the year starts. Annual planning may take multiple passes.
P203. Here are some ways you can celebrate your small wins:
Create a win journal in which you highlight three wins every day. They need not all be related to your best work, and if you already have something such as a gratitude journal, you can add a little section about wins. Going to sleep having anchored your wins leads to much more restful sleep than going to bed with your setbacks or frustration in mind.
Share small wins with other people. It may not seem noteworthy that you finished a piece of something, but it is, and there's a good chance that your friends and success pack will take interest, be excited, and celebrate with you.
Keep a project and/or streak tracker. It's one thing to create a streak or some momentum on a project; it's another, more powerful thing to see that you've done so reliably for the last three months. This tracker can become an amazing tool to shift stories about yourself, for it's evidence that you can do what you set your mind to.
P212. Though minimizing distractions and interruptions requires different solutions, the solutions themselves share the common thread in that they require finding the entry point first and examining how you can alter that entry point. Focusing on the entry point prevents the distraction or interruption rather than reacting to it, for once you're distracted or interrupted—especially during deep work—you've lost the thread and may not be able to recover it easily. Take email, for instance. While it may be true that the notification settings on your devices may seem to be interruptions, you enable those notifications. If you can choose to disable them but decide not to, then you have allowed yourself to be distracted. If you change those notifications, the only way you can be diverted by email is if you check email; the entry points for email are thus the devices and apps that allow you to check email. If you eliminate or minimize those entry points, you make it harder to be distracted by email. We were less distracted by email fifteen years ago simply because we didn't have notification engines in our pocket and there wasn't the expectation of near-instantaneous responses.
P226. As Krishna told Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, "You have a right to your actions, but never to your actions' fruits." When you do your best work, you give up the certainty of outcomes for the certainty of purpose. Of course, you might fail, but the silver lining is that you'll no longer be perennially stuck in the red zone. You'll get to try something with the knowledge that the last thing didn't work, so you can invest more of your energy into alternative options. Or perhaps returning to the heart of the matter will reveal that it wasn't something you should have been doing in the first place. Better to know that today than three weeks, months, or years from now. Again referencing Lao Tzu: "Do your work, then step back." But step back doesn't mean to stop working or jump right into the next thing. Step back and celebrate the journey you've been through, the dragons you've overcome, and the person you've become by doing your best work. You've worked hard to cross that finish line and should be proud.
P240. The following are questions to ask during your AAR. The goal is to be as honest as you can with your answers—this isn't the time to sugarcoat things or pile on yourself.
What went well? This question is fairly straightforward, and we're starting with it even though the natural tendency is to anchor on the next question. This question need not be focused merely on outcomes: consider the people, processes, and tools that made the project go well.
What setbacks, challenges, or missteps did I experience? This question is also straightforward. Don't forget to include challenges you had with other people or your planning, environment, or tools.
What did I learn? This question is intentionally broad to cover project-specific lessons as well as those that are evergreen. Did you discover that you had a particular strength or weakness that you discounted? Did you learn a new key skill or gain insight into how key players in your ecosystem interact?
What habits, practices, or routines do I want to keep doing going forward? To get through the void and red zone of your last projects, you likely had to develop or reinforce some habits, practices, or routines. For instance, I learned very early on while writing this manuscript that trying to draft from home wasn't working, so I started going to a coffee shop that's about three-quarters of a mile from my house. As much as I'd rather write from home (in theory), in practice, going to the coffee shop is a routine that I'll likely keep doing when it's time to get some drafting done.
Were there any especially important difference-makers to the project? For this question, consider difference-makers that go both ways. Your answer can repeat or elevate items already listed, as this question is the one that captures the top items you'll want to remember in the future. For instance, a major difference-maker for this project was the health issue that ate up four months of the time I had to finish the book. But another (positive) difference-maker was retroactively creating a per diem budget and checking account for myself to allow myself to sink into the flow of working from the aforementioned coffee shop.
Celebrate! Celebrate even the small stuff. Celebrate that you did your job, celebrate the people who might have helped you succeed—even if the project failed, the success was the learning.
P245. The space between projects might be more important than the space spent within the project.
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