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You are here: Home / 1 - Productivity / Tie Up Your Loose Ends

Tie Up Your Loose Ends

December 19, 2008 by Matt Perman

It’s tempting when you’re 95% done with a project to just move on and leave the remaining 5% to sort of take care of itself.

Avoid this temptation.

That remaining 5% is going to come back to get in your way and make your life more complicated. If, for example, you do this with 8 different projects over the course of a few months, you now have 8 projects continuing to clog up your system or mind in some fashion, on top of whatever “real” projects you are truly working on.

Instead, take the little bit of time to complete your projects completely. Then you’ll be keeping the decks a lot more clear for a more effective, more streamlined execution of your next projects.

Update: When there are things about a project that you genuinely do want to put off until later, write those down and put them as a someday/maybe or upcoming project to deal with later.

That way, the current project really is complete, but if you want to come back and revise some things later, you can still keep track of those ideas.

Here’s one example: I just organized my garage, since we just moved in. There are a few things I’d like to change about it down the road a bit, but don’t want to take the time to change around now. So I wrote those down and I’m going to create a someday/maybe item to “update garage organization,” with those items in the note field.

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What’s Best Next exists to help you achieve greater impact with your time and energy — and in a gospel-centered way.

We help you do work that changes the world. We believe this is possible when you reflect the gospel in your work. So here you’ll find resources and training to help you lead, create, and get things done. To do work that matters, and do it better — for the glory of God and flourishing of society.

We call it gospel-driven productivity, and it’s the path to finding the deepest possible meaning in your work and the path to greatest effectiveness.

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About Matt Perman

Matt Perman started What’s Best Next in 2008 as a blog on God-centered productivity. It has now become an organization dedicated to helping you do work that matters.

Matt is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done and a frequent speaker on leadership and productivity from a gospel-driven perspective. He has led the website teams at Desiring God and Made to Flourish, and is now director of career development at The King’s College NYC. He lives in Manhattan.

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