Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I have a bad habit of getting 90% of the way through a project and losing motivation. I understand this is typical of the INTJ personality, common on this forum. Any tips for how to complete long projects?

I am similar. I try to make checklists of small steps of a project before I start, then check off each as I complete them. That seems to work for me.

I promise myself a small reward if I finish something 100% - its a real motivator. I've gone the other route as well - Tell a friend that you will give him/her <insert-hurtful-dollar-amount-here> if you don't finish something by a given date. OTCW's suggestion about making a project plan works well too.

accepting that things don't need to be finished

"Waiting is."

I mostly follow Brute's advice. Sometimes deadlines help.

Gilberto de Piento wrote:Any tips for how to complete long projects?

Working on them as collections of small projects helps me(*). As Brute says, not all projects have to be completed. Also look at faster ways to bootstrap your long project; if you can buy the airplane instead of building it, then it will get off the ground much sooner, but buying a helicopter might be even better because then you can land it anywhere that's not a forest rather than limiting yourself to airstrips.

(*) I say this as someone who has collected a lifetime of projects and now only attacks the ones that draw my interest or have a built-in deadline (e.g. gardening).

Gilberto de Piento wrote:Any tips for how to complete long projects?

I struggled with this for a long time, my solution is timeboxing, for my big projects I have a set routine every day. For my last big project which took two years I worked on it for 3 hours every day starting at the same time. I didn't worry about what I achieved each day, just that I was present and doing something.

I would say what BRUTE said, and just add that what I've found is that for the most part, if finishing something is important (to me), I finish it without any special effort or whatever. Sometimes it can get to be a compulsion where I can't relax with undone things around me.

It's things that fall short of truly mattering to me (even though they might have held some degree of interest) that I can have difficulty buttoning up 100%. I'm not a big student of BM, but I'm kind of surprised we INTJs as a group struggle to get things done.

I can lose interest before the end in some projects. The problem projects are those where by 90% way through all the problems have been solved and the last 10% is usually just keep on going, nothing new to learn. When its a project where that last part is a challenge then I will have less of a problem. I now recognise that often my solution in the workplace and in study was to put stuff off until the meet-the-final-deadline rush was enough of a challenge to grip and retain my attention. Then I would start working and finish in one heady inventive/creative rush. Its not a healthy planning system and its one which in retirement I am trying to break.

can lose interest before the end in some projects. The problem projects are those where by 90% way through all the problems have been solved and the last 10% is usually just keep on going, nothing new to learn.

This is a good description of the issue.

I'm not a big student of BM, but I'm kind of surprised we INTJs as a group struggle to get things done.

I tried to find a source for this when I posted originally but I didn't come up with anything. Maybe my memory is faulty.

I struggled with this for a long time, my solution is timeboxing, for my big projects I have a set routine every day.

I'm going to try this, thanks!

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!