How to Finish More of the Projects That You Start

LinkedIn: [00:00:00] Linkedin presents.

Listener Jade: [00:00:05] My question is, do you have any advice on how a maker like me can see more ideas through to completion?

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:14] In today's episode, our listener Jade, she poses a question that I'm sure a lot of our makers and creators have also wondered, what can you do to see more ideas through to completion? And Jade shares her experience of feeling tied down in the busy work of her daily job, while feeling called to diversify her income and embrace a, quote, side hustle. So the essence of the question is, how do you make the most of the small amount of time you have in the in-between moments, and how do you follow through more often to generate the outcomes and the feelings that you really want to have? And underneath that is the question, do we need to in the first place, do any of this? Or is there magic in the mess of the maker? And maybe not centering some of these impulses as the fundamental way we earn our living. And on deck with me this week from the Spartan Brain Trust to help tease out what really matters and share insights and ideas, is sought after. Strategic advisor and executive coach. Founder of the Productive Flourishing Consultancy and author of the multi-award winning book Start Finishing Charlie Gilkey. So quick note you'll hear us mention something we call Sparketypes in conversation. Well, what is that? Turns out we all have this unique imprint for work that makes us come alive. This is your Sparketype when you discover yours. Everything your work life, even parts of personal and relationship lives, they begin to make more sense. And until you know yours well, we're kind of fumbling in the dark. And just like today's listeners, you can discover your Sparketype for free at sparketype.com. You'll find a link in the show notes. Now on to Jade's story and question. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.

Listener Jade: [00:02:00] Hi Jonathan, my name is Jade. She her and I'm a Jill of all trades. I'm an artist, a wife and a mom of two little ones. I currently manage a local store for a national franchise. When I'm not at work, I'm working from home. In my limited spare time, I like to get as close to eight hours of sleep as I can. My job entails a lot of routine and necessary daily busy work that honestly feels like it's eating all my time and leaving very little for developing bigger and better things. Our monthly manager meetings are what I look forward to the most, sitting around a table to discuss solutions to problems and hyping each other up is honestly my favorite. It's also a great source of accountability since I struggle with intrinsic motivation. Lately, I've been trying to diversify my income and get some kind of side hustle started, but I'm being pulled in so many different directions. My Sparketype is a maker with a maven shadow who loves to generate endless ideas. I even like to delve into the trenches of research for ideas that pique my interest. But these ideas rarely turn into reality due to my lack of follow through and distraction. With the latest new idea. My question is, do you have any advice on how a maker like me can see more ideas through to completion? Thanks for your help.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:10] Hey, and before we dive into today's episode, a quick share. So if you're a coach, a consultant or a leader, and you would just love to stand out more in 2024 and beyond with a powerful new credential and a set of results driven superpowers, we have got something for you. With nearly a million people now discovering their profiles, the Sparketypes have become a global phenomenon. People want their work to light them up, and oftentimes they would love some help along the way, which is why we developed our certified Sparketype advisor training. As a certified advisor, you will discover cutting edge tools that spark profound work life client transformations. Stand out with a highly unique credential and skill set in a crowded market. Find ease and flexibility with templated engagement flows, you'll become a part of a global network of change makers, and you'll rack up 40 ICF continuing education credits. Our fall cohort is enrolling now with visionaries just like you, and we would love to invite you to uplevel your capabilities as a coach or consultant or leader by becoming a certified Sparketype advisor. To learn more about the fall training and see if it's right for you, just click the link in the show notes now or visit sparketype.com. Slash pros. Okay, so Charlie Gilkey, it's probably pretty obvious why we teed this one up for you, because you are like my my go to person anytime. I'm sort of like, how do I take a million ideas and distill them down to like, the 1 or 2 that actually might have legs? And then how do I figure out how to test them out and make something happen? Or like, know what's even worth following through on when I've already got a bajillion other things going on in my life. But before we dive into that, I am amazed that Jade has a full time job, two kids, and said, I like to get as close to eight hours of sleep as I can because that is a mind blowing aspiration, and if she's doing it, I'm in awe. I'm in just for that alone. I'm in absolute awe of that.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:05:19] Absolutely. She's she's winning that game sounds like such a pleasant human to me as she was reading it. But yeah, I was I was wondering where it was going. And then and then she got to a few points. She's like, okay, yeah, I know why, I know why Jade tagged me in on this one. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:34] So where do you think we should? It makes the most sense to start out with this.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:05:38] Let's start with the Sparketype Foundation here so we can go from there. So she mentioned she was a maven with a maker shadow. So sort of unpack that for us.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:48] It's a maker with a maven shadow.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:05:50] So I had it backwards. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:52] Yeah. So great idea. So let's tee that up. So Sparketype is the impulse set for work that makes you come alive. The maker. That impulse is all about making ideas manifest. It's the something from nothing impulse, and it's fiercely generative. It's about the process of creation. Um, very often it can be completely immersive to the point of overload, where it becomes actually obsessive. For some folks, the maven, which is her shadow or her runner up, that impulse is all about knowledge acquisition. That is an absolute love passion for learning for no other sake than than learning simply because you get to go to bed knowing more than you did when you woke up in the morning. And that pairing can be really interesting because the the maker takes the lead and says, ooh, I want to make something cool, but I don't quite know what I need to know to make it. And then the Maven kicks in and says, I can help. And then the Maven sort of like lets you dive into all the the wisdom side of it. But that pairing in particular, usually the minute that you actually know what you need to know to go back to the process of creation. You tap out on just the pure learning side. So it's a really interesting pairing for what Jade is sort of like exploring.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:07:03] That's what I was thinking too, because it's a dual process archetype, meaning both of the archetypes love the process, but not necessarily the outcome. And I heard that when she mentioned she's not inherently motivated, which is really fascinating for me for a lot of the creative powerhouses that show up on our shores, because they're like, I'm not inherently motivated, and yet I want to do all these sort of things. And I'm like, well, let's talk about motivation. Let's talk about what what you're talking about. I think she is motivated in the making and in the acquisition. She's not motivated in the seeing things through. And of the many mavens that I know, mavens and makers that I know, especially the makers, it's like as soon as they figure out what the puzzle is, it's no longer fun, right? That was the that was what they wanted. They didn't want to complete the puzzle. They just wanted to figure out what the puzzle was. And so in that sort of scenario that we start looking at is like, okay, one, we can accept that part of what sparks her and gives her joy is actually just the making and seeing it to a certain level of done, and that's the work that it's doing.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:08:04] We can call that sort of the hobbyist impulse. Like, hobbyists don't have to finish what they start. It turns out, however, she mentioned that she wanted to start a side hustle, and that changes what's required. Because if you're going to go into the entrepreneurial space or you're going to go into the pro-am space, you actually do have to ship, right? You have to create something that has marketplace value. And so that's what I would say. One of the ways that she can start, if she's serious about going with the side hustle route, which I would want to unpack, a lot of that is really thinking about, okay, you have to vet some of these ideas to find the ones that are going to either deliver a delight in the marketplace or to solve a problem that the market has. And if those if neither of those sound really interesting to you, then that's where I would say, really? Let's unpack this motivation about the side hustle. I've seen so many makers think they need to call something a side hustle to give themselves permission to make. Um, so I want to make sure that Jade's not doing that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:02] Unpack that a little bit more because I think it's such an interesting point. Let's think.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:09:06] About it. She's a manager. She's got two kids. She's trying to get eight hours of sleep, realistically carving out the time for her just to spend in quote unquote non-productive creation is really hard to justify. It's much easier to justify it if it's earning money, if it's helping people, if it's doing some of those types of things. And so what we do is we take this impulse that we have this creative impulse that we have that's intrinsically valuable for us. But we say, you know what? That's not enough. Actually, it has to do this productive stuff. It has to make the world better. It has to make me better. It has to make money. And then we corrupt the very thing that we want it to do. And so I, you know, I do a lot of business coaching and sometimes people are like, they'll come to me and they're like, well, I want to start a business. And I'm like, okay, great. Well, what's the business idea? And they're like, well, I'm looking for a business to start. And I'm like, I don't understand that. Having having done this this long, this is not something that you would want to do without having that pretty, that thing that you want to wake up in the morning and do. And some of us are fortunate that the thing that we do, there's a marketplace demand for it. And so, again, for Jade, that would be the first thing that I would want to start with. Is why the side hustle, and is it really that it's a convenient way for her to give herself permission to do the making that she most wants to do? And if that's the case, how about now? How about she just doesn't like we start with saying, what would it feel like to not add that additional side hustle, pressure, goal, all sorts of things on top of that and just make more space for making?

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:34] Yeah, that's such a great point. And it actually really lands with me because, you know, in multiple past lives now, I was a, you know, a lawyer in a large firm. And one of the first steps out was, was sort of like learning the world of fitness and wellness and the outdoors. And so I started my own quote, side hustle, because I loved mountain biking, I loved hiking, I loved taking friends out for the day. I loved rock climbing. I said, well, that's that's awesome because I can get to I get to create all these experiences and I can turn this into a business and get paid for it. So I started a business doing that, and I started leading people on day long expeditions or adventures. And very shortly I realized that it stripped a lot of the joy out of the process of creation for me. Is that it just it really qualitatively changed the nature of what I was doing. Now. I have since then found other ways where like, I have found a much better sweet spot between something that will generate income and also allow me to step into that maker scientist, which is my Sparketype. But I'm doing that as an opening move. It did exactly what you said. It made me want to run away from it, and then for a little while, at least, run away from the impulse, because I started saying to myself, it's not a valid expression of this impulse, which is powerful inside of me, unless it also generates the income to justify the amount of time and bandwidth and energy that I give to it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:02] And for sure, if it needed to support me, that would have to be a part of the equation. But if you're already have something where it may not be the most fulfilling thing in the world, but it's taking care of you, it's like letting you sustain yourself and let you feel like kind of like, okay, and you have a little bit of space on the side. I agree with you. I think it's such a good idea to first just play play with doing things that let you express that maker impulse, regardless of whether on the surface there's a really clear, conventional, direct, easy path to a sustainable income. And just see how it makes you feel and then see that and like try on these different things. And then once you try them on, you start to see, oh, like, this actually didn't really do it for me. But this like creation and making it this way I get to learn a ton for her Maven impulse and I get to make really cool stuff. And now let me think if there are like other ways that I might be able to build some sort of interesting or sustainable source of income around that. Once I've just spent time in finding the space to express the impulse.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:13:00] Absolutely. I often will encourage people to date their play or date they're making meaning. Don't decide. There's just one thing that you really want to do. Like, you might want to do a lot of things. You might want to try pottery. You might want to try painting, you might want to try playing guitar. And the whole point is to figure out if you enjoy doing it. Like the key thing I think for a maker in this one is do I want to do this again, right? Or do I want to create something else? And if the answer is yes, do it. The answer's no. Then go make something else. That's the the benefit. And you know, I was just talking to a client yesterday about this. She had some different struggles going on, and what it amounted to was in her current job, there wasn't the growth path that she thought she had. And so before we decide to do anything, I was like, well, let's play it out. Are you okay with your job being boring for a little bit that you go and you do a great job. It's not necessarily the most fulfilling. You're good at it. You serve your teams, you earn your paycheck. But then if you're okay with it being boring, there's all this play space outside of your job where you can focus on that growth. Maybe you she she does, in fact have a side hustle, right? I was like, you can take that energy that you were going to invest in, the growth in your career and for the next 6 to 9 months, invest some of that energy there, or maybe sleep.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:14:17] That was for my client, but for actually for Jade, if that's your goal, it turns out starting side hustles on top of a full time job with kids is not really conducive to getting more sleep. I'm just saying. Right. And so date some of those ways you might want to play and make. If one really catches fire. And there's a obvious path for a side hustle or entrepreneurial thing, then that's great. But you might find that again, you move from making pottery. I'm just picking on that right to teaching pottery on the weekends and that's it. That's what you that fulfills you, that gives you a spark. And it doesn't create this outsized commitment that might take you out of alignment with, you know, your health might take you out of alignment with being with your kids. It might take you out of alignment with other things that matter for you. You know what we both share here, Jonathan, is our focus is on helping people thrive or live a good life. And that comes in so many different packages and settings and things like that. But I think just latching on to, you know, job plus side hustle equals more fun or joy or happiness. Like that's a very serious assumption that we need to at least pause and say, but what if there's a simpler path to get you what you're really most wanting to do?

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:27] Yeah, I love that. And I want to circle back also to the notion of motivation, you know, Jade shared, I struggle with intrinsic motivation lately. So I've been trying to diversify my income and get some kind of side hustle started. So it does sound like eventually diversifying. Her income is one of one of the goals. But like because that was in the same sentence as I struggle with intrinsic motivation lately. You can see that interrelationship because sometimes when you're trying to figure out how do I get, how do I express this impulse in me most fully? But a part of it is always it's got to pass the litmus test of income from the beginning. It can really narrow the field of things that you will like using your language, date in the early days and try and just play with. But I also want to just talk about this notion of intrinsic motivation and doing what you're doing. Because I've had this conversation so many times over the years, and I know you have two Charlie with folks who are either thinking about starting something or founders or people who are actually kind of like into their business for a while, saying that they're just, you know, like they lack motivation and they'll say some version of like, how do I get my motivation back? How do I how do I stay motivated to keep showing up because this is 16 hour days or 18 hour days? And by the way, that is the world of entrepreneurship.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:38] It is not that you get your time, your life back, at least for a while, you know, how do I and how do I stay motivated? So beyond the core factors of things like burnout or just genuinely the fact that it's really, really hard to start and build something and it takes a lot out of you. When I hear this sort of consistent thing that says I'm really struggling with intrinsic motivation or sustaining my motivation for it, I really do get concerned that this is not a motivation issue. It's an alignment issue. Absolutely. And things are going that that's really what's happening here. So tell me a little bit about like your take on this.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:17:12] Yeah I want to unpack motivation to be more about habits and environment, habits and environment, which is another way of saying alignment. I think a lot of makers, a lot of creative folks think that if they're not fired up sitting there making by themselves, then they're not motivated because that's what creative people do. That's what all of it is. It's like, it actually turns out that many people thrive in a co-creative environment, like they actually want to be creating things with other people. So that's an environmental piece. Maybe it's for Jade. It's whatever her creative thing is. She didn't tell us much about that. But like, you find a partner to do that with, or a co-writer or a co-creator or just someone that's in the room doing it with you, and that's all you needed. Maybe it's a matter of your physical environment and just not being in a place where you're set up correctly. Now, I want to be careful because a for those of y'all who can play this game, like finding the perfect environment can be a very convenient way of hiding from doing the work that's in front of you. But for Jade specifically, it might be that she needs to have a play space or maker space in her house that makes it easier for her to see things through.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:18:21] You know, I don't probably don't need to go too much of this, but so much of the momentum that we get with our making, our making work, comes down not to the brute force. I'm going to like, make myself do it. And I've got the motivation. It's just butt in seat time, right? And how do you create the environment and the habits that give you the Goldilocks amount of button seat time for you to make whatever you're making and continue to do that So, you know, Jade, like many people, it's not a, you know, how do I get more ideas problem. That's. So many of us don't have that problem. It's how do I give the space and time and environment and structure to the great ideas that I have so that I can see them through? Because what we want to avoid is the regret and frustration of, you know, a hundred half done things. If those half done things actually needed to be finished for some other goal, again, makers actually can let themselves off the hook because the goal was not to finish it, it was to be in the process of making.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:19] Yeah, I love that. And the other thing that that I would add to that is that in in our research, what we've seen and in my personal experience, as I shared, my primary Sparketype is actually the maker is that makers can also be attached not only to the general process of creation, but to a particular phase within the process of creation. And I'm raising my hand right here. So, Charlie, you know this about me because you have seen me go through this many, many, many times over many years. I've started a lot of different things and I've ended a lot of different things, and I've started a lot of different things that I have then gotten to a place where it's sort of like, okay, you know, like the, the, the experience of coming up with the idea, going through the really hard early days and turning it into something real and then making it solid enough and giving enough of a foundation and and a heartbeat and a, you know, and breath so that it's a real thing that exists in the world. It's, you know, it's there and doing what needs to do. I love that it's one of the hardest phases. But my wiring, my maker impulse is actually much more anchored in the very early ideation, insight and the early stages of making. And once it gets into sort of like the the second and third and fourth phase of creation, where it's much more about systems, process, execution, scale, all part of the creative process and my eyes just start to glaze over. So when you were saying.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:20:48] That, I was like, you mean the fun part, right? Right.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:50] That's when I call you and say, okay, step in and take over. Right. So, so sometimes and I wonder and I'm just planting the seed with jade a little bit maybe like think about like is is maybe what's happening that you're really excited about the early part of it. Because maybe your maker really anchors and feels the most fully expressed in the very early parts of the creation process. And once things get more systematic and more systems process scale oriented refinement expansion, which again is part of creation, I really have seen that a lot of makers are very anchored to expressing this impulse in particular phases. So so think about maybe are you actually getting to a place where when you're shifting into those next phases, your maker isn't nearly as engaged, and that's where that that intrinsic motivation is falling away, because the thing that brought you to it in the first place starts to fall away a little bit. And that may be what's happening, which is actually completely fine, you know, but it's good to sort of like ask those questions and, and try and figure out and, you know, is this actually part of what's happening in my process?

Charlie Gilkey: [00:21:56] Yeah, I love that. And again, this goes back to what I was saying about co-creation, because I'll talk about writing because a lot of us understand it. Like there's an aspect of ourselves that is just the scribe. That's just the job of just getting the ideas out there. And then there's the editor. And many people love when they're in Scribe Flow, but as soon as it comes time to start the editing thing, they're like, check out, I can't get done, I'm stuck and things like that. And it's like, well, that's a different job. That's a different aspect. Showing up and having someone who's really wired to be that editor, which can be a maker, believe it or not, right, makes it so much fun because you know when to hand that off, right? When when that sort of goes that way. What other sort of observation that I had from Jade going to try not to take us off too much is I was wondering, I was like, mm. She has a lilt when she talks about being with people and firing, firing each other up. And I'm like, I think she's in a career, or she's in a job where she's managing stuff or location, but she might need to be in a job where she's managing people and spend more time doing that, because that was the true. As I was listening to it, I was like, ah, there's Jade. I hear her there more than anywhere else throughout this thing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:07] Yeah. Um, yeah. And she actually said she's like, you know, like I made a job where there's a lot of routine and necessary daily busy work. It feels like it's eating all my time, leaving very little for developing bigger and better things. And right after that, she says, and I think this is where you picked up the lilt, because I think I kid on that. Also, she says our monthly manager meetings are what I look forward to the most, sitting around a table to discuss solutions to problems. And that again speaks to the early stage of creation. Like that's where like that maker impulse, the insight and ideation phase of it really, it's like, well, it makes a lot of sense that that would be the part of it that really lights her up as well. So. Jay's actual question to us, I know we've been jamming on all sorts of different parts of of her offering was, you know, do you have any advice on how a maker like me can see more ideas through to completion? And I'm wondering if there's a way to answer that, but maybe there's actually questions embedded within that that would be more helpful to answer. So I'm going to kick that over to you.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:24:07] Yeah. So we actually have been jumping around some of those. So part of it is get clearer about why you're doing the thing in the first place, right. To have a really good North Star, you know, have a really good sense for why this particular thing matters. And again, if it is a side hustle thing, there's a reason why that matters. If it's the making things, that's a that's where. But I at least you know. Well and one of the things we pushed back against is maybe for so many of these things, she doesn't need to finish, which is weird for me to be the guy that says, you know, that you don't need to finish things. Given that I wrote the book, start finishing. But that's the thing is, there are a lot of things that we can leave undone so that we can finish the things that matter most. So get super clear on your why. Build the environment. Whether it's the physical environment, the social environment that helps you do that. What I'm going to say is, especially for this particular matrix of of Sparketypes realize that ideas need to be converted into projects, which means they need to be put on schedules. They need to have some goals attached to them, they need to be put some structure around them.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:25:10] Otherwise you're just going to be running around chasing your tail because ideas are like rabbits. You put a couple of them together and you get way more than you can ever deal with. Right? And so converting that idea into a project means getting a goal, actually committing to seeing it through, getting it on your schedule, building what I call a success pack around that, and a good anchor sort of size of project for so many people is that pick a quarter size project something you think you can get done in a quarter that makes you marshall enough of your resources to stick to it long enough, but a quarter sized project actually creates significant progress and momentum in the world, right? And you'll get to see more of what your body of work might look like with a quarter sized project than if you just try to choose something that you can get done in a week, and so on and so forth. So that might be a short story. It might be a painting, it might be, you know, a fraction of code. It could be a personal development plan for your team.

Charlie Gilkey: [00:26:06] Right. Developing one of those as a quarter sized project and just really seeing that through at that level. But the trick here, and people are going to want to stab me for this is as best as you can pick one at most three of these quarter sized projects. You know, I talk a lot about the five projects rule. I think we talked about this last time, but no more than five active projects per time. Horizon. The time horizon is a quarter. Jade already has her job, which is eating up some of her projects. She already has her kids, which are eating up some of that so she doesn't have as much room for other quarter sized projects. So I would say pick one that you're going to do for the next quarter. Really commit to it, build your energy around that, and then at the end of it, move on to the next one. And most people makers creatives are really astonished by how much momentum they can create in a quarter, and that if they did that consistently throughout the year, if you got four significant quarter sized projects done every year, it actually dramatically changes your life, your career and your work.

Jonathan Fields: [00:27:08] I love that, and I think that is the perfect place for us to wrap. Charlie, thank you so much, Jade. I hope you got some good value from that. And to our awesome listening community, I hope you all did as well and we will see you on the SPARKED podcast next week. Hey, so I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Learned a little something about your own quest to come alive and work in life, and maybe feel a little bit less alone along this journey to find and do what sparks you. And if you'd love to share your own moment and question with us. We would love to hear from you. Just go ahead and click on the submissions link in the show notes to get the details on how to do that. And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully alive, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life. Take the time to discover your own personal Sparketype for free at sparketype.com. It'll open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app. This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. Until next time. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.