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GET OVER COMPLETION ANXIETY

To be honest, I don’t know if there really is something called completion anxiety or if it’s something I made up. I do know, however, that a huge number or people are afflicted with it! I also know that it creates an enormous amount of stress for those who have it.

I define completion anxiety as the tendency to “not quite” finish something, presumably because it makes you anxious or uncomfortable in some way. There’s a way that we “almost” finish things, but not all the way—homework, dishes, discussing uncomfortable issues, chores, or work, for example.

If you have ever hired a carpenter or handyman (or woman) to do some work around the home, have you noticed how even very talented and hardworking people have a tendency to finish almost everything but leave a little part of it undone? Have you either experienced this yourself, or have friends who are in the habit of finishing all but part of an assignment? If you’re asked to do the dishes or clean your room, have you seen how hard it is to bite the bullet and do it all?

Who knows why so many of us have this tendency? Perhaps it’s because we feel that if we finish all the way, we’ll be asked to do even more—or that if we finish, there will be nothing left. Maybe we resent being asked to begin with. Maybe it’s something else.

But if your goal is to have less stress in your life, take a look at the implications. First, think about the stress of always having things hang over your head. When something isn’t done, it’s hard to put it behind you, check it off your list, and forget about it. It’s always looming and tugging on your attention. It’s a burden.

In addition, it’s a pain to have people—parents, teachers, employers, clients—breathing down your neck and applying pressure to you. It’s hard to have people disappointed in you, asking, reminding, or nagging you to finish.

The problem is, most people have a tendency to notice what we haven’t done instead of what we have done. Right or wrong, parents will often notice the 10 percent of the room that isn’t clean instead of the 90 percent that is. Or a teacher will ask, “Why didn’t you do this one?” rather than saying, “I think it’s great you did most of them.” If I turned this book in with ninety-nine strategies done, but not all one hundred, my publisher would be more concerned with the missing strategy than the ninety-nine that were done well.

Recently I hired someone to fix something at my home. The person did an excellent job, technically, but left a sloppy mess on our floor. To be honest, I was more concerned with the mess than I was impressed with his work. I took it as a given that the job would be done well—but that was overshadowed by the thirty minutes it took to clean up the man’s mess. Whether he cares or not is a different issue, but he won’t be hired again by us, nor will he receive any referrals. Had he taken a few extra minutes to complete the job, it would have been a nonissue.

One of the simplest ways to reduce this type of stress is to make an effort to finish things—all the way, 100 percent—whenever it’s within your power to do so. You’ll eliminate tons of stress because you won’t have to think about it anymore, and you won’t have anyone bugging you about it. People won’t have any ammunition against you.

The way I look at it is this. You probably intend to finish it at some point anyway, just not now. But if you do it now, rather than later, you won’t have to be stressed and hassled in the meantime. Whether it’s something specific, such as a task or chore, or an entire list of things that’s looming heavily on your mind, the extra effort to complete things, whenever possible, pays big dividends in the quality of your life.