I’m thankful for the opportunities I’ve had to learn from:

Exceptional Leaders

I’ve got their nuggets tucked away and am pulling one out to share with you.

In the corporate world, one of the roles I held was Project Manager. This came with establishing the project mission and supporting it with resources, clear deliverables, and due dates. At the onset of a project, many are optimistic about the dates being met. As time goes on, shifts in the schedule are often requested due to competing priorities, scope creep, and challenges.

Shifting dates works for a period of time, but there comes a point where pushing through matters.

I once had a leader give me this feedback after shifting a deadline:

Done Means Done

This taught me the importance of commitments and not allowing continual excuses to hinder project success. The goal is not to do tasks forever, but to achieve impactful transformation (on budget and schedule).

This feedback has stuck out to me and greatly informs the way that I show up in my personal projects.

I may be feeling blah, have personal challenges, and have a bunch of things to do that are important, but that “Done Mean Done” cheers me on.

Here’s a question to continuously ask yourself as you go after your personal goals:

When do you want to hit the goal?

Backing into this question will inform your actions. Yes, making progress is good -> but reaching completion is better. Don’t over hype making progress. So many of us have goals die off in the middle land.

It won’t be me. It won’t be you.

Commit to crossing over so you can advance to the next challenge.

Reaching “done” shouldn’t just be some way out there mark. It should be a consistent practice as this will create the momentum and persistence needed to hit the overarching goal.

For me that looks like showing up on this blog every day and hitting done by midnight – no matter what.

I have a vision and my consistent action will bring it into fruition. It’s not the occasional showing up that yields results.

I care about my writing reaching people, but I care more about my commitment to executing daily as that’s the type of service I want to provide long term.

What are you working to mark as done? Is there a goal that you have left lingering in the middle?

Love,