Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done
Written and Narrated By: Jon Acuff
Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins
Fending Off Perfectionism… made fun!
I love Jon Acuff and his books about work, and following your dreams, and finding purpose in your job and in life. I love his insights; I especially love his narration of his own books. He’s an enthusiastic reader, delivers each humorous observation with a quick and witty jab, and in his audiobooks, he adds little asides that aren’t in the written work. Plus, and this I looked up: The man looks exACTly like he sounds. What a goofball!
Finish is one of my favorites, if not my ABSOLUTE favorite, of his books. I think it’s because, while in his earlier audiobooks his narration is a triiiifle stilted, here he sounds like he’s quite simply having the time of his life educating us on what Monsters Lie in Wait as we try to achieve completion in our lives.
The book opens with Acuff letting us know that he well and truly jumped the gun with his book Start. It turns out that, while a LOT of people have a problem with letting go of fear long enough to start projects, more of us have a problem with finishing what we start. Fear IS the problem, yes. But we need to let go of our fear of not being Perfect.
Perfectionism lies to us, makes us not want to even try; makes us want to give up before we find that perhaps, yeah yeah yeah, what we’ve done in no way fits our vision of what we hoped we’d achieve. The good and hopeful part? Well, Finish highlights where we might encounter our demons, and it has honest-to-gosh solutions for each of the problems that might arise.
Solutions such as cutting your goal in half as, if your goal is to lose 10 lbs. and you lose only 8, you’ve failed miserably. Whereas if your goal was 5, you’ve succeeded most mightily. Then there’s choosing what to bomb in your life (Otherwise known as Strategic Incompetence!). If you have a big goal, you can’t do EVERYthing well, so let the lawn wither and die, let your children go to school in wrinkled clothes for a couple of days, forget about doing Pilates for a bit. Focus on the goal, and get ‘er done!
Jon, and I do feel I can call him Jon rather than refer to him as “the author” or Acuff as, after listening to this, I feel he and I are good chums, has chapters on making things fun, leaving hiding places and ignoring noble obstacles, using data to celebrate imperfect progress, getting rid of secret rules (And he describes just how SHAMEless cuckoo birds are in the Animal Kingdom… Really, they’re rather awful, and they’re a good metaphor for insidious secret rules that kick out rational thought).
Expect health issues/goals to be covered alongside work. Expect creativity issues/goals alongside work. Expect parenting issues/goals hilARIOUSly to be covered alongside work (Jon is a flawed, flawed, parent!). This was a really good, really helpful book, and I actually went on Amazon and bought the paperback version for easy access and for my husband to see lying around, thereby inciting interest. Not that HE has any problem with finishing stuff; it’s just that Jon is soooo funny, so inspiring, I just wanted to share the danged book!
Okay, okay, okay. So now that I’ve finished Finish? I think I wanna start Start…! I’ll let ya know how it goes. Ya never can have too much Jon Acuff!
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