Starting, or Finishing?

2025 has been my best year yet for journaling. I made a "one word rule" for myself: every day I would write at least one word in my journal.

This rule works for several reasons, but the most important for me is that it is so easy to succeed at. All I need to do is write that one word. Of course, I usually end up with more, but that isn't the point. Writing a good entry is easy once I'm going. So I focus on the place where I'm likely to fail: starting.

For a while, I thought starting was also my challenge with blogging. I have plenty of ideas, many of which I can write in one sitting. Shouldn't I focus on directly tackling those posts?

The difference is that it's harder to finish a blog post than to start one. While I'm happy with anything I write in my journal, I have higher bar for published essays. It's good to make it easy to start writing a post, but that won't remove the friction of feeling stuck partway through.

If I want to blog consistently, I need to find ways to finish.¹

The two problems "starting" and "finishing" aren't completely opposed, of course. You can have both problems at once. (I've rarely composed music this year, and even more rarely finished it).

To me, the problems even feel similar: I have some goal I want to accomplish, but I systematically don't work on achieving it. I get frustrated with myself, and I try to stress myself into making progress.

Yet as challenges, they ask for different approaches. Starting well means removing barriers at the beginning, lowering standards but not results. Finishing reliably requires asking what I really want, and accepting that there will be hard parts in the process.

Both require identifying where the difficulties are.

Notes