#1 Wall Street Journal bestseller! Jon Acuff New York Times best-selling author of Do Over
Quitter and Start offers strategies for anyone who's ever wondered Why can't I finish what I
started? According to studies 92 percent of New Year's resolutions fail. You've practically
got a better shot at getting into Juilliard to become a ballerina than you do at finishing your
goals. For years I thought my problem was that I didn't try hard enough. So I started getting
up earlier. I drank enough energy drinks to kill a horse. I hired a life coach and ate more
superfoods. Nothing worked although I did develop a pretty nice eyelid tremor from all the
caffeine. It was like my eye was waving at you very very quickly. Then while leading a
thirty-day online course to help people work on their goals I learned something surprising:
The most effective exercises were not those that pushed people to work harder. The ones that
got people to the finish line did just the opposite- they took the pressure off. Why? Because
the sneakiest obstacle to meeting your goals is not laziness but perfectionism. We're our own
worst critics and if it looks like we're not going to do something right we prefer not to do
it at all. That's why we're most likely to quit on day two the day after perfect-when our
results almost always underperform our aspirations. The strategies in this book are
counterintuitive and might feel like cheating. But they're based on studies conducted by a
university researcher with hundreds of participants. You might not guess that having more fun
eliminating your secret rules and choosing something to bomb intentionally works. But the data
says otherwise. People who have fun are 43 percent more successful! Imagine if your diet
guitar playing or small business was 43 percent more successful just by following a few
simple principles. If you're tired of being a chronic starter and want to become a consistent
finisher you have two options: You can continue to beat yourself up and try harder since this
time that will work. Or you can give yourself the gift of done.
