Finishing Things Is Hard
Why the Last 20% is Challenging and What to Do About It.
In Brief:
The Last Stretch: Why the final 20% of any creative project feels hardest and how to push through.
Practical Strategies: Reverse-engineering your schedule, staying focused, and resisting shiny distractions.
Be a Completer: Completion bridges who you were when you started and who you're becoming.
Read Time: 9 Minutes
Finishing Things Is Hard
"Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing."
— Barry Finlay
Yesterday, I completed songs 9, 10, and 11 for the new album.
Walking home from the studio, the chill wind raked against my face. It felt cleansing and reminded me of my feelings when I set out on this project at the start of the year.
“No, this isn’t full circle. This is forward.”
The last month has been the hardest part of the project—completion is always a unique challenge.
Starting is hard, too, but it’s common for things to fall apart shortly after they begin. The cost feels lower at this stage because the investment is still small.
What is more perilous is the final 20%.
By then, you’ve already committed time, money, energy— and reserves of faith.
Novelists know this well.
The horrible realization that what you thought was 100% is just a draft.
Instead of celebrating completion, they meet the beady-eyed sentry of the edit.
You’ve entered the danger zone of “Albatross Project” —those projects that come so close to completion but never get over the line.
Having faced my share, I know this space well and have stayed vigilant these past months.
Today, I want to share what helps me navigate the last 20% of a project —the treacherous zone where decision fatigue sets in, energy wanes and shiny new things distract.
1. Danger Zones Require More Effort
As you approach the final 20% of a project, you enter what I call the danger zone.
At this stage, the stakes feel higher. If you stumble now, you're left with nothing because you're so much further along than when you began.
The glacier incline steepens, and the impact of a potential fall becomes all the more threatening.
You have to grit your teeth, engage the crampons, and thrust the ice pick into the heart of the mountain.
This isn't to say there's no enjoyment in the last 20% of a project. On the contrary, there's an unparalleled uplift once you break into the final percentile.
But before you do, you have to navigate the overhang—the part of the climb when the start is so far down it dizzies you, and the overhang obscures the peak.
No point requires more effort.
Here’s the thing: at the beginning, you are stimulated by the energy of the dream.
You’ve had the boldness to set out on the adventure. As you do, the world starts to renew itself, and in doing so, it changes you. You’re filled with the promise of transformation, and as you hit the slipstream, you are pulled along by the rhythm of the world itself.
In the last 20%, though, fatigue sets in.
Effort is no longer propelled by the force of its own momentum.
What was automatic must now be achieved manually.
At this point, it is easy to feel that things are not going your way or to question whether you have the strength to complete it.
What helps is to be aware of the danger zone you have entered:
Recognize its conditions.
Map its terrain.
Prepare that this stretch takes extra energy.
Resolve to see it through
Self-forgive if there’s a low
2. Reverse Engineer the Ending
My biggest challenge in the last few months has been the sheer quantity of client work.
I’ve taken on too many film jobs, partly because, as a freelancer, you harvest when it’s plentiful in case things turn fallow. Concurrently, recording is expensive, and studios and musicians need to be paid.
To do what you want, you must first do what you have to.
The effect of this is dilution.
The danger is that you are so pulled away from your project that you begin feeling a sense of distance from it.
I counteracted this in three ways:
Reverse-engineering the timeline to complete the album, knowing a heavy workload was ahead.
Pre-booking recording dates to stay accountable to myself, the studio, and the musicians.
Being transparent with clients about deadlines, helping them plan accordingly.
This trick—reverse engineering your goal—is one of the best tactics you can have for completing something.
With artistic projects, the danger is always the openness of the process.
Instead, apply some brutal pragmatism.
3. Beware Shiny New Things
One of the greatest perils to completing things is the threat of the new.
Great projects take time; the longer they take, the more they test us.
As you enter the last 20%, you find yourself in the grind—where every step feels slow and like it takes so much effort.
It is easy at this point to start dreaming of something else.
Why?
Dreaming is easy, but action is hard.
You are in the heart of your project, but with it being so unyielding, you drift towards the allure of the new.
This is the paradox of great undertakings.
Because the longer it takes, the more you realise you are chained to the version of yourself that began the project.
Now that time is passing, you are becoming something else.
Does the project still fit?
The new holds a special allure, tempting you to believe that starting a fresh project will finally lead you to where you want to be.
The danger is that you become a serial starter.
It is a very modern mindset—to be attracted to the new, the next, and the shiny.
Resist this.
You have come so far.
It is not time to move on.
Fulfill the promise of who you were to make space for who you will become.
If not, you will never trust yourself when the going gets tough in a project — as it always will!
4. Be a Completer
Completing things is a value unto itself.
I understand that time morphs, goals change, and new things call us.
But a project is not just a project.
It is a vow you once made to yourself.
If you show yourself that you can complete things, you trust yourself.
If you do not, you will always live with the knowledge that when things get hard again—as they surely will—that you will abandon them.
Instead:
Be a completer.
If it no longer feels right, don’t abandon it—finish it.
Completion doesn’t mean tethering yourself to it for years; it’s about creating a sense of closure.
I could have decided that this album was 10 songs, not 12—if necessary, it would have been a viable adaptation.
But for me, my goal felt right.
If yours does not—readjust the goal.
But don’t leave this time of your life floating.
Complete what you start.
Under your terms.
You do not have to be bound to your original goal.
But you do want to prove to yourself you can see a promise you make to yourself through.
Nip and tuck the past.
Then move to the future.
5. Embrace Boredom
The resistance to completing things is often because boredom has set in.
There is a point in a project that is about doing the dogwork.
Any project comes with tasks we would rather not do.
That is tied to the reality of work.
What I try to do is to make a ritual of tasks.
To accept that they are part of the process.
Rather than resisting them, how can you be more present within them?
The more present you are, the more you discover that all things have their own value and teaching.
Boredom is not written into the thing itself; it is carried into the task by the attitude you bring in.
I try to bring a mindset of radical acceptance into these tasks.
To embrace boredom as a ritual.
Some days, yes, it’s just a drudge.
But to finish anything, you have to acquiesce to the conditions written into it.
In this, the capacity to be alive in boredom is one of the greatest skill sets of all.
Conclusions
"Knowledge of self ought to be the great project of our lives."
Ben Okri
Nothing offers you the chance to express who you are more than completing things.
This is not about the outcome and what you can show the world.
It is about showing yourself that you can see through what you set out to do.
This is a moment of special significance.
In some ways, all your life is written into it.
It is a bridge between who you were—the person who set out on this project—and who you are becoming—that is, the person who will emerge as a result of its completion.
Recognizing this period's significance has helped me treat it as something holy.
I have found that I didn’t want to just drive forward my project to completion.
Yes, completing this album remains a goal for the year.
But the year is not a means to an end.
The year is life itself.
During the hour-long journey to the studio this year, I have witnessed the seasons change, and myself too.
Wind has snapped against my face, rain beaten my brow, the sun lifted my mood, and leaves have grown and decayed through their full cycle.
I have been in process with them, and they with me.
Within that kaleidoscope has been every emotion—the panic of last-minute lyrics written on trams, the awe of seeing a song emerge, the thankfulness for the talent of others, the doubt of whether I still have it, and the joy of watching an ethereal dream transform into reality.
Now is about completing.
Completion is the bridge between where you were and who you are becoming.
That is a promise worth living up to.
You cannot predict the outcome.
But you can be sure it will shape your character.
Crampons strapped.
Pick-axe in hand.
Teeth clenched if necessary!
This day is about finishing what you set out to make.
Remember—that is something holy, joyful, and worth embracing some discomfort for.
Keep in there.
Keep going.
Be a completer.
See you next week,
Jim
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