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Why do people start projects and don’t finish them? Why does something seem so much more fun when you first start doing it. Do we get that quickly jaded? Or is it just how humans are pre-programmed to operate?

Remember when you purchased your first car? You drove it around the block a couple times before you came home (I remember I almost got a speeding ticket on my first ride home). The point is that you were super excited about your newly acquired vehicle. The first weekend came around and you spend an entire morning washing it, vacuuming and waxing your new toy. A couple months went by and suddenly you lost interest. Washing the car became a chore, you no longer looked forward to driving it. You took the quickest route home, as the goal shifted from enjoying the ride to arriving at your final destination.

How did that happen? What changed so drastically that made you shift priorities? I don’t know exactly but I suspect it has to do with focusing on the outcome instead of the journey. Before you purchased the car, you spent a lot of time thinking about it, comparing prices, looking up reviews and pros & cons. All of these tasks kept you focused on the desired outcome. When the outcome was achieved, you quickly started losing focus and interest.

The same can be said for completing projects. You decide to refinish your kitchen table, you focus on the outcome: having a nicely re-stained table. You start building a new web application or a piece of desktop software, and your focus is on the final product. How nice it will be when your application is being used by 2,000 people. What you are gonna do with your time when you have hundreds of users purchasing your iPhone app for $2.99 a piece. There is great power in visualizing the outcome, as something to strive for but the focus should be on the journey. How are you going to start? How will you market it? When will you ship version one? Who will likely be your first customer? Focusing on the journey will hopefully keep you motivated the whole way.

Achieving small daily goals goes a long way towards renewing your energy. Starting is easy, because you focus on the end result. You tell your friends about a new idea, and it makes you feel like you have already started. You spend a ton of time selecting a name, and this part is fun, but in reality you are no closer than you were when you first began.

Next project you start, try to focus on the steps and daily goals necessary to achieve the outcome, instead of focusing on the end result.