Comments on: Birthlines, Part 3: If You Want To Win, Stop Trying To Finish

By: Not Nothing | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time

Not Nothing | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 07:16:57 +0000

[…] Don’t get it done. […]

By: Hello world! | theblindsniper

Hello world! | theblindsniper — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 10:17:36 +0000

[…] back on AJATT. It was a shorter one than a lot of his usual stuff, but it had a very simple point: plan to start, don’t plan to finish. Khatzumoto is quite a talented writer when it comes to motivational pieces – I would go as […]

By: Excuses, Even Some Good Ones! | Tentative Scribblings

Excuses, Even Some Good Ones! | Tentative Scribblings — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 13:39:33 +0000

[…] Stop Trying To Finish […]

By: Mattholomew III, Esquire

Mattholomew III, Esquire — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:12:48 +0000

Does this apply to comments as well? Should we compulsively start to comment with no intention of fini

…just kidding, I love you man.

By: fairykarma

fairykarma — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 23:02:53 +0000

Yes, I was working on that comment for a good half hour before I put an arbitrary deadline on it. I could’ve worked on it for another hour or two or forever.

By: fairykarma

fairykarma — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 23:01:16 +0000

I agree on the “finishing as a state” mentality. Because finishing is an arbitrary thing that one chooses. I could start a paper a month early or some days before. Either way, my mind comes to stage where it says, “I think I’m done”. I can never truly determine how exactly I came upon that idea that I’m just….done. Done. Finished. Hand it in. The funny thing is the mind tells me that I’m done only when I get close to the deadline. But when I start a month early and just work on it, piece by piece, there’s always something more to be done. It doesn’t matter if my draft has fulfilled the rubric requirements weeks before the set deadline. Technically, the paper could be finished, but my mind will keep giving me ideas on how to improve the paper even when I’m not actively working on it. I could be showering or driving and ideas on how to improve the paper will pop out of nowhere. Once the deadline approaches, my mind just seems to shut down. No new ideas. Maybe the mind perceives the deadline as a threat because you could have been having all the fun in the world composing that paper, but the deadline brings ideas of failure, peer comparison blah blah.

But then I get my paper back, sure enough it’s an A+. But deep in the back of my head there’s a pile of shame. I tell myself that I could’ve made this paper into a masterpiece were it not for that stinking deadline.

So while deadlines SEEM….ahem SEEM to be crucial for institutional progress, I don’t think we should perceive them as crucial. A deadline is completely arbitrary. Say the paper is due on the 25th. The teacher could’ve made it the 24, the 23, or god forbid the 30th. Five more days. Yea! Having read Khatz’s articles on these theme though, I think it’s better to think of deadlines as the day you stop working on your paper. Not the day you finish the paper. You and I know that paper is never finished. Given no deadline, you would go on forever. You might even become obsessed with that paper striving to make it perfect when you know deep in your heart it will never be perfect.

I completely agree with Khatz. Start little and often. Chances are you’ll probably accomplish the amount of work that will given you an A+ long before the deadline. If you know in your heart you’re definitely getting that A, would you honestly just flat out quit working on that paper, especially if it’s fun? There’s too much goodness and juiciness going on there for you stop. You could go on forever. But the deadline is what stops you. Preserves your sanity. Too much fun on the wrong things is not good.

But Japanese is not a paper. You definitely want to keep drinking that juice until you completely lose your sanity. Do you want to be the guy that spent 70 years working on that paper or 70 years working on that Japanese? Deadlines are there to stop other things like school assignments from hogging all the fun you could be having with Japanese. So yea, have fun with school. Have fun with work (Try your best on this one!). But think of deadlines as tools to manage your fun. Fun is a limited resource. You gotta spread it around to your life activities in a way that keeps you moving in the direction that you want to go.

Deadlines = Fun distributors? I dunno. What do you guys think?

By: Eldon

Eldon — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:38:03 +0000

^ That’s me, baby. You do get somewhere eventually though, it just seems to take sooo much longer.

By: John Biesnecker

John Biesnecker — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:11:40 +0000

I think a key element of focusing on starting, though, and not finishing, is that you have to continue to start things that are at least related if you want to see movement. A lot of people (myself included) are very good at starting eight things headed in eight different directions which, because they don’t build on each other, or reinforce the work that each of the others required, never really result in any movement. I think you at least need a “cone of direction” to corral your starts into at least a general vector so that they build on each other.

By: gaijinadrian

gaijinadrian — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 18:37:28 +0000

Hey Khatz, another great post. Btw, I just bought the LARD and was wondering if you were going to make new volumes after a while to keep up with your posts.

Adrian

By: Mattholomew III, Esquire

Mattholomew III, Esquire — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:31:33 +0000

Fantastic, as usual.

And, not to be a nitpicky editor type, but I think you meant “What most of us lack” (last paragraph, second sentence).