This episode is brought to you by Your Clockwise Week—a personalized weekly structure built around your actual life, not an ideal one. If your week feels full but not fitting, you can learn more at mikevardy.com/yourclockwiseweek.

On this episode, I chat with my good friend Charlie Gilkey. He’s the author of the book Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done and is the founder of Productive Flourishing, a company that helps professional creatives, leaders, and changemakers take meaningful action on work that matters.

Charlie and I have been friends for years and we see eye to eye and a lot in the world of personal productivity. This book has been a long time coming and we spend time discussing the building of the book, the role of pacing in productivity, the idea of the “thrash” and how it impacts finishing, and much more. There’s a lot to unpack in this episode and I’m really happy to bring to you. Enjoy!

Talking Points

We talk about the relationship between starting and finishing to the calendar

How important is pacing when it comes to productivity?

Charlie explains where folks like him and I can get in trouble

How does someone keep themselves from getting run over by other projects when they are focusing on other ones?

This is something that didn’t make the cut during the editing process of Charlie’s book

Charlie says that this is one of the pillars of productivity

What is thrashing?

What does Charlie think about making all projects…well, projects?

How did Charlie deal with thrashing during the writing of his book?

Charlie talks about getting past the “hard side of things”

Quote

“A project in motion stays in motion. A project at rest stays at rest.”

Helpful Links

Start Finishing

Productive Flourishing

The Productivityist Podcast: Jon Acuff

The Productivityist Podcast: Cal Newport

The Productivityist Podcast: James Clear

The Productivityist Podcast: Josh Kaufman

The Productivityist Podcast: Austin Kleon

Finishing is hard. But it can be done as long as you know that you’re going to face this idea of “thrashing” along the way, especially for things that really matter to you. I know I’m going to face that thrashing as I write my book (among other things) and knowing that is going to be there is the first step in seeing it through to the finish. The next step you could (and should) take is picking up Charlie’s book because it will help you with every other step thereafter.

Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.

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