Determination
Doing the work after the interesting part is over.
The behaviour, in one line: I regularly push through the boring, hard middle of projects and finish things other people abandon.
Enthusiasm is front-loaded. It covers the first two weeks of anything and then runs out, usually long before the work is done. Determination is what moves the work after that, in the stretch where most of the field stops.
Anything worth doing has a stretch in the middle where it is hard, dull, or discouraging — after the excitement has gone and before the payoff arrives. Nothing carries you through that stretch except turning up. Most people stop there, which is a large part of why finishing is worth so much. A digital environment makes the middle harder to stay in, because the exit is always one tab away — a new tool, a new thread, a new project that is still at the interesting part. Finishing was always rare. It is now rare and surrounded by alternatives.
| What it is | What it isn’t |
|---|---|
| Finishing the right thing | Refusing to notice it is the wrong one |
| What you do once motivation has gone | Motivation itself |
| A steady rate over months | A quick sprint, then stopping |
| Decided in advance | Renegotiated every afternoon |
What it looks like. Week six of a migration nobody is excited about any more. Nothing to demo, no praise coming, three fiddly tickets left. You do two of them. Tomorrow you do the third.
- The middle of anything real. Learning a language, rebuilding a process, finishing a qualification. Novelty covers the first two weeks, and so does the launch demo. Nothing covers weeks three to thirty except turning up: the migration, the stragglers, and the spreadsheet someone still keeps on the side.
- The last twenty per cent. Documentation, edge cases, handover. There is no applause in any of it, and it is the difference between something that shipped and something that was nearly finished.
- When the feedback goes quiet. Early on, progress shows. Later it is invisible for weeks at a time, and you have to keep working without the results telling you that it is working.
- Cut the task down until the next step is one physical action you could take now. You are not trying to finish. You are trying to have somewhere to put your hands.
- Commit to five minutes rather than to the task. Starting costs most of the energy, and once started the five minutes usually turn into more on their own.
- Decide in advance what you will do when you want to quit. Almost all abandonment happens in a moment nobody planned for.
- Make progress visible — a streak, a checklist, a burn-down. In the middle stretch there is no other feedback available.
- Break it into parts
Three parts: cutting the task to one next action, starting without motivation, and having an answer ready for the urge to stop.
- The part that carries it
The answer you write down in advance for the moment you want to quit.
- The order to learn it in
- Practise the five-minute start on work you do not care about, where stopping costs nothing.
- Get quick at cutting any stalled task down to one physical next action.
- Write the quit-plan before the next long project begins, then use it when the moment arrives.
- Put something at stake
Pick one unfinished project, tell someone its finish date, and hand them something you lose if it slips.
- Compress it
You do not need to feel like finishing. You need one next action, five minutes, and a plan for the moment you want to stop.
- The smallest useful dose
One five-minute start on the thing you are avoiding, every working day.
- Anchor it to something you know
The middle of a long run. The novelty has gone and the finish is not in sight yet. Everyone feels it. The people who finish are the ones who expected it.
“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”
— Angela Duckworth, Grit
The interactive version is in the course. The diagram, the simulation and the four-question check for Determination run in the free course, where your progress across all 24 skills is kept.
Open Determination in the course →
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