There Are Three Things I Started

You can see all three of them from that chair.

The one on the left, which got about halfway. The one by the window that got further and then stopped for a reason you cannot now remember. And the one on the floor, which is technically still in progress, in the sense that nothing has happened to it since about April.

Three unfinished things, visible at once, from a sitting position, in a room you spend every evening in.

And the effect they have is out of all proportion to their size. They are small things. Not one of them would take more than an hour. But they are in your line of sight every night, and every night they say the same thing, and they say it quietly and constantly.

Here is what I do not think is going on, and it is what everybody assumes.

I do not think you have a discipline problem. Somebody with a discipline problem would not have started three things. They would have started none.

What you have is an appetite for beginnings, which is genuinely a good quality, and a total absence of any experience of completing something small, which is a separate and fixable thing.

So tonight we are not starting anything. Tonight we are finishing one, and it is going to be the smallest of the three, and it is going to take twenty minutes.

Sitteth not down first, and counteth

There is a line in Luke about starting a project that everybody quotes as a warning and is actually a method.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? (Luke 14:28, King James Version)

Sitteth not down first. That is the actual instruction inside the question, and it is a physical one.

You are being asked to sit down before anything else, and a beginning has never once been improved by being made standing up on the way past. Luke 14:28 puts sitting down at the front of the whole business, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a young woman in a chair with three things in view.

Now look at what is being counted, because it is not money in that verse.

Whether he have sufficient to finish it. That is what the counting is for. Not whether it is a good idea. Not whether it will be impressive. Whether there is enough to get all the way to the end of it.

Which means the question at the front of every project is a question about finishing, and it is asked before anything begins.

You have a question available to ask before starting rather than after stopping, and finishing has never once been something to work out halfway through. The Spirit of God is the one who teaches a person to ask the right question at the right end of a thing, and it is written in Luke 14:28 that the counting is about sufficiency to finish.

The size is the whole problem

Now the practical part, and it is not about willpower.

All three of those things were the wrong size. Not too hard. Too big for the amount of continuous time you actually have, which nobody ever measures before starting anything.

There are about twenty five minutes of uninterrupted attention available on a normal evening. That is not a character flaw, it is a fact about a life with a job and a phone and other people in it. And every one of those three things needed about an hour and a half.

So each of them got twenty five minutes, which is the amount available, and then stopped, which is what happens.

You are working with the amount of time you actually have rather than the amount a project assumed, and a stalled thing has never once been about the person who stalled it. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what actually went wrong, and Luke 14:28 asks whether there is enough to finish before anything is begun.

And here is the piece that changes everything, and it is the reason this article exists.

Nothing small has ever been finished all the way in that apartment.

That is not an accusation. It is a gap in your experience, and it is doing an enormous amount of damage, because a person who has finished something small knows what it feels like, and that feeling is the entire fuel supply for everything afterward.

Nobody can be argued into finishing things. They have to have done it once, recently, and remember it.

You are one twenty minute job away from an experience you have never had, and a completed small thing has never once been too small to change what a person believes about herself. The Spirit of God is the one present in the last two minutes of something small being finished, and it is written in Luke 14:28 that the whole question is about having enough to finish.

And this, plainly, in these words. That apartment is not a report on you. Not on your character, not on your capability, not on whether you are the kind of person who follows through. Three unfinished things are not a verdict on the young woman who started them, and I am not going to allow them to be read that way while she is sitting in that chair.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from three half-done jobs, and what is unfinished in a room has never once been a statement about who lives there. Luke 14:28 puts the whole matter into sitting down and counting in Luke 14, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

The smallest one, twenty minutes

So here is the assignment, and the word smallest is doing all the work.

Pick the smallest of the three, set a timer for twenty minutes, and finish that one all the way before the timer goes.

Smallest. Not the most important. Not the one that has been bothering you longest. The one that is closest to being done, which is probably the one you care least about, and that is exactly right.

Because tonight is not about the shelf. Tonight is about having finished something.

You are picking by size rather than by importance, and the smallest available job has never once been the wrong one to start with. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a decision made on the right basis, and Luke 14:28 asks about sufficiency to finish before anything else is considered.

Then the timer. Twenty minutes, on a clock, out loud if it helps. Sit down first, which is what the verse actually says, and look at the thing for about thirty seconds before touching it.

And then finish it. All the way. Including the last bit, the bit that is fiddly, the bit where a person usually says that is basically done and gets up.

Basically done is what the other two are. Tonight one thing goes all the way.

You are going to the actual end of one thing tonight, and a last fiddly two minutes has never once been the part worth skipping. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a person in a chair for the final two minutes, and it is written in Luke 14:28 that the counting was about whether there was enough to finish it.