90% Completed Bridges: Seeing Things Through to their (Useful) End

One of my favorite constructs is the notion of the 90% completed bridge as a metaphor for getting things done.

A 90% completed bridge LOOKS beautiful, and a lot of effort has gone into its creation. But as we all know, a bridge that is not completed is not navigable, and thus, is not really useful.

Therein lies the paradox. STARTING projects is fun, exciting, creative, challenging, and the progress from zero happens fairly quick.

FINISHING projects is all sweat and drudgery. Often, it seems that the last 10% takes as much time as the first 90%, which is why so many projects that get started never get finished in any useful sense.

This is something to keep in mind in the year ahead; namely, finishing what you start, and not starting what you don't fully intend to finish.