Mostly Done

Since I wrote and published my first book Reach Out, I have been casting about coming up with other business and productivity ideas to potentially expand into a second book. One of those ideas was Surprise Deck, which I shared in a previous Beck on Tech.

Another idea I am exploring to see if it has book potential is what I’m calling Mostly Done: The Strategy of Finishing Nothing to Get Ahead. Maybe eventually it will find a publishing home. Until then, here is an excerpt from the book proposal.

—

What if getting to Done isn’t the goal?

• “We finish what we start.”

• “Anything worth doing is worth doing all the way.”

• “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”

What if everything you know about finishing things is wrong? What if the power in life is getting things… Mostly Done? Getting that to-do list, that inbox, that project … almost finished, not quite there, just about wrapped up?

Think about it: nothing in your life that actually counts will be finished.

• You will never tell the people you love how much you love them enough.

• You will never get to the absolute highest point of your career.

• You will never believe that you have completed everything that you are meant to do during your time on Earth.

All of these things will be Mostly Done, and we accept that as a point of being humans.

So why do we think that in our day-to-day work lives, everything must be FINISHED to feel accomplished, to be happy, to shut our laptop down, to find dollars and friends and fun?

You can have a great life getting things Mostly Done, and this book will teach you how and why. You’ll learn how to find happiness, not by checking every last thing off some list, but by purposely leaving things at work… Mostly Done.

This book dives into the mistake we make when we over-index on finishing at work. We’ll explore through science-backed research, interviews with successful people, and my own real-life experiments the power of leaving work and career items unfinished as a path to leap-frog over our goals, the competition, and our own limiting beliefs of what is possible in our lives.

Together, we’ll explore The 12 Principles of Getting Things Mostly Done:

1. The end point is always 93.27%. Perfect doesn’t exist. Stop chasing it.

2. Build a bad memory. Start enough things that you have to forget some.

3. No time to worry about departing when you’re starting. Stay young at heart by not being afraid to try new things, even if you don’t know how to finish them… yet.

4. Bite off more than you can chew (and then we leave it on the plate). Trying everything is better than doing nothing.

5. A closed loop can be worse than an open loop. Unfinished ideas create possibilities.

6. Timing is everything and nothing. It’s almost impossible to time a beginning or an ending exactly right, for you and everyone else. That is freedom.

7. Sunk costs are suck costs. You don’t need to finish things that aren’t working.

8. Think less, things are probably fine. Overanalyzing leads to overcomplicating, which leads to a dangerously myopic focus on finishing things that don’t need to be finished.

9. Build a bad memory. This is purposely on here twice.

10. Your Mostly Done is someone else’s finished, and your finished is someone else’s Mostly Done. Perspective, Perspective, Perspective.

11. Adjust the goalposts and then leave the field. It’s okay to coast at work.

12. Beginning is fun, ending is yawn. Stressing less about finishing means starting more.

Because in life there are two types of tasks: tasks that have an ending and tasks that don’t. Car rides have a clear ending, career rides do not.

You’ll waste your talents and your potential, if you try to finish everythi*

-Molly Beck

*this newsletter is purposely left Mostly Done