One thing I hear from a lot from readers of The Heart to Start, is that many people have no problem starting new projects. They instead struggle with finishing them. I can relate. Like many creative people, I once struggled to finish projects. I always had new ideas, I left books half-read, projects half-finished. I had done lots of creative work, and had little to show for it. Now I still always have new ideas, and I still leave books half-read and projects half-finished. But now, I have lots of finished projects to show for all the work I’ve done. What’s changed? I’ve learned to finish what matters, and forget the rest. Embrace your inner Perceiver A turning point in my own creative journey came when I learned to embrace my inner Perceiver. As much flak as the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator gets for being pseudoscience, it’s still a useful lens for understanding your own tendencies. The concepts of Introversion and Extroversion have wide scientific support, but also useful I think are the concepts of “Perceiving” and “Judging.” If you watch in awe as one friend after another executes on ideas and achieves success, while you flounder, working on one idea after another, but never truly following through, your friends are probably “Js”, and you might be a “P.” This is the position I was in, until a friend at a party explained this dichotomy to me. Why was this other friend of ours so great at follow-through, while we both struggled to find our paths? This friend was a J. We were Ps. Another way of thinking about being a Perceiver is you’re someone who sees Possibilities. You can’t move forward with one idea, because you keep having other, better ideas. Meanwhile, your “Judging” friends find an idea, make the judgement to stick with it, and see it through. Shiny objects aren’t shameful Perceiving Possibilities is a necessary part of being creative. For DNA to be discovered, the researchers had to entertain the Possibility that they should pursue something other than the original intent of their grant application – which was to study cancer treatments. For Alexander Fleming to discover antibiotics, he had to see Possibilities in experimental petri dishes that were contaminated. If you want a treasure trove of Perceivers, look no further than nearly every person Walter Isaacson has written a biography on. For Leonardo Da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa, he applied his knowledge of optics to his sfumato technique, which allowed him to model the painting with no hard lines. He applied his knowledge of anatomy to crafting the Mona Lisa’s mysterious smirk. He had dissected humans and animals, studying exactly which muscles were recruited to express various emotions. In episode 272, I talked about how Steve Jobs and the engineers and executives at Apple had to consider the Possibility that while a trackwheel served as a useful interface for an iPod, it might not be such for the iPhone. Isaacson himself has said, “People who love all fields of knowledge are the ones who can best spot the patterns across nature.” So if you’re someone who beats themself up over Shiny Object Syndrome, consider the Possibility that it’s a necessary component of creative thinking. Creative success happens in Extremistan On the rare occasion that someone with shiny object syndrome does finish a project, it might not be successful, and that can make matters worse. Why bother following through with anything, you might think, when you aren’t assured of success? But, creative work calls for a different approach to success. As I talked about in episode 253, creative work happens in Extremistan. Nobody knows anything It’s impossible to predict which creative projects will be successful. If record companies knew hits, that’s all they’d release. If movie studios knew blockbusters, that’s all they’d produce. If publishers knew bestsellers, that’s all they’d launch. If Venture Capitalists knew unicorns, that’s all they’d fund. And they wouldn’t be called “Venture