You Will Never Finish Your Projects if You Don't Change Your Identity
Recovering Overthinker
To finish your projects, you need to see yourself as a person who completes what they start, not just care about the project itself. Lowering the bar or switching to a simpler project with a hard deadline can help build this identity. This shift changes how you work and helps you finally complete your goals.
5 Jul 2026
Caring more about the project means being strict about not changing its scope or self-imposed quality expectations. It means you care about completing this single project in the way you imagine it should be completed more than you care about the bigger picture.
But if you prioritize becoming the person who finishes what they start, every project can be bent and adjusted to that larger mission. A project can even be strategically abandoned.
How to lower the bar? Reduce the scope and lower the quality expectations. “But I don’t want to,” you might say. Well, I guess you should go back and read this piece from the beginning.
Example: It took me 3 years to put out my first YouTube video. I recently did over 110 daily uploads in a row (long form, not shorts). The 3-year wait was mainly a product of refusing to lower the bar. I “had” to learn how to edit, and I “had” to learn how to narrate better, and I “had” to create this documentary-level video on the concept of existential anxiety. So I tried, and stopped, and planned, and tried, and stopped, and planned again... Until one day, I somehow finally realized that, if I want to make and upload YouTube videos, I need to become someone who makes and uploads YouTube videos. Crazy how that works, right?