72. How to Finish Unfinished Projects (Or Let Them Go Without Guilt)

Episode 72

You start something with a burst of motivation… and then it just sits there. Half-finished. Out of sight. Until one day you remember it (or not!) and think “Oh shoot! What ever happened to THAT?”

Unfinished projects are everywhere: old notebooks, digital files, inboxes, craft closets — and they carry an emotional weight that drains our energy, focus, and confidence.

In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I’ll show you exactly how to handle your unfinished projects, whether you want to finish them or let them go without guilt. You’ll walk away with a clear, practical strategy to move forward — no shame, no chaos, just intentional action.

What You’ll Learn:

• ✅ Why unfinished projects weigh on your focus (even if you’re not thinking about them)
  ✅ A step-by-step strategy for getting clarity on your incomplete projects
  ✅ How to decide whether to finish, postpone, or let go of old projects
  ✅ Why the “sunk cost fallacy” keeps you stuck (and how to break free)
  ✅ Practical tips for restarting projects with momentum (without getting overwhelmed)

🎙️Other Episodes + Resources Mentioned

• Episode 08: Motivation vs Discipline: Which One Matters More

  Episode 54: The Secret Ingredient Behind Every Accomplishment Ever

  Episode 55: Body Doubling for Focus

  Episode 64: How to Do Hard Things

  ✏️Get my FREE parent training: How to Help Your Student Handle School Like a Pro — Without Study Frustration, Assignment Overwhelm, or All the Drama (If you’re the parent of a high school or college student, this training is for you.)

• Get the Transcription

  The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them 😉

  
  72 How to Finish Unfinished Projects

  ===

  [00:00:00] You know how it goes. You start something with a burst of motivation, maybe even a solid plan, and then it just sits there, half done, outta sight until weeks or months later. You suddenly remember it exists and you think, "oh no, that thing." 

  Unfinished projects are everywhere. They're in digital files, in notebooks, inboxes, craft closets, and they come with emotional weight, guilt, avoidance.

  That low-level hum of, "I should really [00:00:30] get back to that. Or even should I?" And here's the thing, starting and stopping projects is not the problem. That's human. That is just creative. That's real life. The problem happens when all of those half-finished things pile up and start to drain our focus, our energy, and our confidence.

  So in today's episode, episode 72, we're going to talk about how to deal with those unfinished projects, whether you decide to finish them or let them go without the guilt. [00:01:00] You'll walk away from this episode with a practical, clear, and intentional strategy to move forward. So let's get into it before this becomes a half-finished episode.

  [00:01:30] All right, so if you've been around the block with me, this first step cannot be a surprise, and that is to get clarity. 

  When we are overwhelmed by unfinished projects or even by a sneaking suspicion that we have forgotten something, we have to start with clarity. So what does that mean? That means what are the projects that haven't been finished?

  A huge source of anxiety [00:02:00] is not knowing. It is the thought of like, oh no, am I forgetting something that stresses us out often more than the thing that we remember we have to do. So my question to you is this, where would you go to get clarity on your unfinished projects? Is it your task management system like Asana or Notion or Monday?

  Is it in Trello? Is it in your school's learning management system, in your, you know, course portal? Is it in your email? Is it in your physical filing [00:02:30] cabinet? Is it in a stack of papers on your desk? Maybe it's in a Dropbox folder labeled client work or Slack thread with follow-ups that you meant to get back to.

  Maybe it's, you know, a draft blog post saved in WordPress, or a half-finished resume. Now the point of this step is not- hear me loud and clear- it is not to shame ourselves into confronting all of the unfinished projects, and what we think that means. And I know for some people it might feel that way.

  But when you [00:03:00] see where this full strategy, it's going to lead you in just a moment, it's actually about reducing the shame around those incomplete tasks. It's about removing the ambiguity and the uncertainty and the anxiety around not knowing what they are or where they are or if they even exist. 

  So back to the step of getting clarity, we are just finding out what these projects are.

  Now, I'll tell you that when we did a basement renovation and I went through my [00:03:30] craft supplies, I was confronted with probably, I don't know, 10 to 15 half-completed craft projects that I started god knows when. I don't know. Probably before kids. A little from my quilting phase, a little from my knitting phase.

  A little from my sewing phase. Definitely some half-finished oil paintings, like you name it, I started it. So this step looked like me pulling out my art bins and removing a half-knit blanket and a couple of quilted squares or whatever, and putting them all on the [00:04:00] floor in front of the closet so I could see them and get total clarity.

  To be honest, I did throw most of them away. 

  Students a quick word here. You may have, you know, 'cause obviously these episodes are for professionals and students, so I'll try to distinguish the strategies and the tips for when it makes sense to do so. So if you're a student, you may have incomplete projects and tasks that are overdue assignments. And that is not what we're talking about here. I have other resources about how to finish late assignments. I'm gonna leave those in the description box and in the show notes at [00:04:30] Learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/72. I have some real concrete practical strategies if you're a student and you're behind in late assignments.

  Okay? These tips are for professionals, of course, and for school related projects that you started on your own. Maybe you began organizing all your digital files for senior year or started a master spreadsheet for your college applications, but then you just, you know, left it halfway through. Okay? That's what these tips are for.

  Okay? The next step, [00:05:00] figure out what's worth completing and what you can let go of. This is my favorite step, and I'll tell you, I didn't always find this step easy. And you may also find it super hard, and I get that. But this is what we're aiming for. I am not saying that this is where you have to be right now.

  Okay? The ability to say, oh, finish this and toss this. Okay? But this is what we're moving toward- the permission to let things go. You don't need my permission to do anything. [00:05:30] You're in charge of you, but I'm reminding you that it is okay to let go of incomplete projects that you just don't wanna complete anymore.

  Art now for my art supplies closet and half completed projects, I looked at what I had started and they reminded me of like this really cool time in my life where I had time to be creative and create art. But when I looked at some of those half finished things, I just didn't wanna complete them anymore, and I gave myself [00:06:00] permission for that to be okay.

  Now, this might be too vague for some people, so let me give you some criteria to use when deciding whether to keep a project or let it go. Okay? These are just some criteria. It's not everything, but these are just some things to think about. 

  Number one, let go of projects that no longer serve your academic, personal or professional goals. Maybe it's like a side project that you started during a clo CLO slow client [00:06:30] season, but now you're fully booked with clients and work and you haven't touched your project in months. Perfectly fine to let it go. Maybe you started building a website for your creative writing portfolio back when your semester was lighter, but now that you're juggling, you know, labs and club meetings and midterms, maybe sports, I don't know.

  It's just not the right time to keep going. Let it go. Let go of things that don't align with the season of life that you're currently in. So this is the second criteria. For example, if you are actively looking for a new job, [00:07:00] maybe you give yourself permission to abandon the extra initiative that you were working on to try to get a raise at your current company.

  If it is a wildly busy academic semester because you're playing sports and you're taking, you know, organic chemistry and you're rushing a sorority or fraternity, it's okay to let go of your side hustle that you've been trying to get off the ground. Number three, the third criteria, let go of things that you're holding onto just because you already started them.

  That's it. That's your reason. That's why you're holding onto them. [00:07:30] You're not letting it go because you started it already. Now, this is something called the sunk cost fallacy, and it is super common, but it's an unhelpful belief that once we have invested either time or mon money, I don't wanna say mongy, I am combining my words today, whatever time, money, or energy into something, that in order to get the most value of that thing that we have to keep it.

  And this isn't true. And that's why it's, you know, called a fallacy. If you spend a hundred dollars on [00:08:00] a pair of jeans and you realize that you don't like those jeans, keeping those jeans does not earn you back your a hundred dollars. That cost is sunk. It's gone. You let the jeans go. If you spent a few weeks working on a proposal for a new idea to present to your manager or to your boss, but then you realize that it, it wasn't really that good of an idea, let it go.

  Yeah, you spent weeks on it, but pushing forward on a bad idea does not earn you that time or energy back. That is a sunk cost. [00:08:30] Google it: sunk cost fallacy. It's what keeps us holding onto ideas and objects and projects, not because they're still worth it, but because we've already sunk time, energy, or money into them.

  And if you're holding onto a project for that reason, let it go. And then number four, criteria number four. This one's definitely my favorite. Letting go of things that you just don't want to complete. End of story. You started a project, it is incomplete and now you don't wanna finish it, [00:09:00] then don't. You are allowed to change your mind.

  You are allowed to change your goals. You are allowed to change what you like and what you don't like, and no one even needs to know because here's a little secret, nobody cares. I say that lovingly and obviously the caveat here is that you know, if you are responsible for something that's part of your job or your academics, well then saying, I don't want to do this 'cause I don't like it doesn't really cut it right, but if it's a, you have to do it anyway.

  But if it's a project that you [00:09:30] initiated and you don't technically have to finish it, and now you don't want to, drop that thing like a hot potato. 

  And again, I know that for some people this is hard. There's a lot of like, yeah, but you know, I should finish this and yeah, but what if I want to finish it at some point in the future?

  Like, yeah, but I already got this far. Yeah but I always start and stop projects. And maybe all of that is true and all of that can be true. And you can still let the thing go.

  Now one important tip that I wanna mention here is to consider whether or not [00:10:00] a project is worth doing, but. It might be better postponed to a later date. Yes, you can postpone your half-completed projects again, because chances are like you postponed them at one point and that's why they're half-completed.

  It's fine to keep that going. That's not procrastination. That can actually be strategic time management because it might just be that you identify a project worth completing, but just not now. You want to do it. It excites you. Maybe it aligns with [00:10:30] your goals, but just not right now. And in these cases, you can just simply move that project to an overflow parking lot figurative, right?

  Maybe you store it in your task management system as a future project. You can add it, you know, to your Google calendar with a reminder for, let's say, three to six months from now, and it just says like, revisit, and then the name of the project, whatever. And then when that date rolls around, you ask yourself like, Hey, is now a good time?

  If so, get to work. If not, you can postpone it again. [00:11:00] But here's the thing, if you are postponing the same project over and over and over again, my bet is that it's just guilt that's keeping it around. So if you postpone the same project, like mm, I'm gonna say three times in a row, let that thing go. Or even just, you know, delegate it to someone else if it's that type of project.

  All right, let me recap here. Step one was to get clarity on what these half-baked things are. Go into your systems and, and wherever you store your projects, it might be digital, it might be [00:11:30] physical, and assess what they are. This is inventory. Step two is to figure out what you're going to let go of and that leaves you with the projects that you are choosing to complete.

  Hopefully that list is shorter than the whole list of projects that you came up with in step one. If not, that's fine. If you have to complete everything, like that's okay too. That's what the following strategies are gonna cover, like how to actually do this. So this third step is to figure out what happened, right?

  Like what caused the pause? [00:12:00] Was it accidental? Was it intentional? Was it internal or was it external? Now, external reasons for abandoning a project are usually easier to identify and to solve for. It can be something like time constraints. You ran out of resources. You were waiting on input from someone else, and then they dropped the ball.

  You didn't get funding. Your partner on the project is just no longer your partner on the project. Any of the external reasons are pretty straightforward, like I said, to solve for. [00:12:30] If you have a half finished project that you stopped because you had no time to work on it, then the strategy is to continue the pause until you have more time.

  Okay, this is perfectly fine. Or you can look at your calendar and maybe find, you know, one chunk of time each week where you can put some minutes into that project. If you ran out of resources on a project, let's say funding, right? Well, then only one of two things can happen. You're gonna be able to get funding, or you're not gonna be able to get funding, okay?

  If it's a project worth pursuing, [00:13:00] who do you need to go to to inquire about funding? What is that process? If the funding is just straight up not there and there is no way for you to find alternative sources, that might be the end of the project, right? So see how these external reasons for abandoning projects are fairly straightforward.

  I'm not saying that they're easy to deal with, but at least you can say, this is why my project stopped. Okay. And you can either solve for it or not. But then there's the internal factors. There [00:13:30] is a whole bunch of internal factors or internal reasons why we stop projects. Maybe we just straight up forgot about them.

  Maybe we lost interest. Maybe we got intimidated by how hard the project was once we dug into it. All right. In which case you would go listen to episode 64 called How to Do Hard Things. Maybe we became bored with the project. Okay. Understanding the reason for the pause helps us to restart with the right strategy.

  [00:14:00] So for example, let's say that you realized that you stopped working on your scholarship spreadsheet because it became overwhelming. Then maybe your strategy is to break it into smaller chunks or to ask someone to review it with you. Okay? 

  All right, next step, we have clarified what our, um, unfinished projects are.

  Maybe there's one and maybe there's 20. We don't judge what we have in front of us. You have determined which tasks you're gonna let go of and which ones you're going to pursue, and you've done your best to think about the [00:14:30] reason why you stopped those projects in the first place. Now, the reason we just did that last step is to figure out why we stopped the project in the first place is that helps us use the right strategies to restart. Okay, now let's talk about actually finishing those things. Just remember, those are the only projects that are left. The things that we are going to complete. Okay, what do we have to do and when are we going to do it? That's the strategy right there.

  Okay. What are we gonna do [00:15:00] and when are we gonna do it? 

  Here is a tip I strongly, strongly recommend. Work on one project at a time. If for whatever reason you have zoned out watching or listening to this, I want you to zone back in right now

  and hear me loud and clear. I want you to only focus on restarting one project at a time. We are not in the business of multitasking. It does not work. So [00:15:30] starting with one project at a time, I want you to think about what would it take to finish it? Do you need an hour? Do you need a few months? Do you need any resources or equipment?

  Do you need input from a team member or maybe a professor? Do you just need a good, solid, juicy chunk of time to sit and critically think about the project? Cool. That's where we start, by starting with that one project you think is worth it over [00:16:00] all of the other projects. Think of the very next step that you need to take that will restart that project.

  It doesn't have to be huge, okay? But something that will kick that project back into gear. Put that time on your calendar and make it happen. And yes, I know that is easier said than done, but there is literally no other strategy for taking action than taking action. I'll say that again. There is no other strategy for taking action than taking action.

  [00:16:30] Action is the magic bullet. In episode 54 called The Secret Ingredient Behind Every Accomplishment Ever, I talk about that reality. The reality that we often overthink what's needed for something to happen when the only thing that's needed is to take action. Easy? No. But that's the reality. Now, of course, you can use body doubling, which I talk about in episode 55.

  You can try a mindset shift about motivation versus discipline. Those are very different things, and we [00:17:00] need to use them differently as if they're tools. I talk about that in episode eight. There are so many levers that you can pull to encourage yourself to take action. Every single episode on the show is full of them.

  You may need to change your environment. Loop in a partner for accountability. Go into just monk mode and lock it in, as kids these days say, but I can give you all of the strategies in the world, but you still need to be the one to show up and do it. The [00:17:30] strategies don't take action. You do. Alright, but here's the thing, this time, it's different. This time you are restarting that project with clarity about why you're doing it in the first place. You know what got you tripped up in the first place, and you're going to avoid that same block, right? So this time it's different. Whether it takes you an hour or a few weeks this time you've got it.

  Okay. I really don't wanna overcomplicate this, so let me see if I can distill [00:18:00] the major messages here. When you find yourself confronting projects that are unfinished, we need to face them. If we don't, they stress us out and they make us feel guilty and in some cases affect us professionally and academically if those projects are related to our obligations or our larger goals.

  So we get total clarity by doing an inventory of what these projects are. What are they? Write 'em down on a list that might take you five minutes. It might take you 20. Who knows? You won't know until you jump [00:18:30] in there. And then we ask ourselves, which of these can I let go of? Cross them off your list.

  Boom. And of the ones that are remaining, we figure out why we stopped. Was it for an external reason for an internal reason? Because when we figure out the reason we got sidetracked from the project, we can show up with the right strategies and then we get to work. Or you can postpone the project again if the timing is still not right, but this time we do that intentionally.

  Now, before we close [00:19:00] out today, I wanna emphasize something that I mentioned at the top of the show, which is that having a bunch of unfinished things is normal.

  
  It is obviously not awesome if you are a student, you know, not turning in your assignments, or if you're a professional and you're not delivering what you're supposed to deliver, but that's not really what I'm talking about here today. The stuff that we talked about today are the non-urgent projects that maybe aren't so deadline based, and you've intentionally decided that you want to finish them.

  Stopping [00:19:30] and starting again is not the problem. There's nothing wrong with you. This is a normal way that humans operate. Okay. But the dysfunction piece comes into play when we've lost track of our projects altogether, and it begins to affect our school or our work, or our perspective of ourself. And that's where the strategies we talked about today come in.

  All right, my friends. I do hope you found this helpful and I do hope that you've been enjoying the show. If you have, could you please let me know in one way or another? If you are watching on YouTube, [00:20:00] subscribe and leave a comment. If you have a question, you can submit questions for me to answer on upcoming episodes.

  The link is at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/72. I appreciate you and always never stop learning.