Structured procrastination: The Unfinished Task.

Look at the shape of it, because this is the reverse of the way the thing gets sold to you. The claim that has been repeated at you for years, that your mind keeps unfinished things on a hook so you can't forget them, is the one that didn't survive the pooling. The claim that survived is duller and considerably more useful: interrupted people go back.

From chapter 10: The unfinished task

Here is the narrow version I will stand behind. The shape of what you're carrying, an unfinished thing that you keep going back to without deciding to, is a shape that has been measured for a century, and when it was pooled the evidence pointed at returning rather than at remembering. What that changes is not whether you should build the business. It changes what you think you're holding.

From chapter 10: The unfinished task

That is how the book looks at “structured procrastination”: one idea at a time, with a step you can take right away. Of course, this is only one idea from the book. So, if this passage speaks to you, the full chapter goes further, and it ends with an exercise you can do the same evening.

In short, the book has 11 chapters, and each one ends with a practical exercise. Therefore, you can read it in order, or you can go straight to the part about “structured procrastination”.

1. The gap between wanting and doing
2. The three-month window
3. What counts as started
4. The number that keeps moving
5. Preparation and its stop condition
6. The course that never ends
7. The licence you do not need
8. Why later always wins
9. Nobody chooses the day they start
10. The unfinished task
11. Fourteen days

Finally, you can get The Unfinished Task: I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start in the stores below. Because every title of this book shares the same text, you can simply pick the one you like best. Also, the book is available in 19 languages.

In addition, each title below highlights a different idea from the same book.

• Fourteen Days: I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start
• I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start: Preparing Is Not Progress
• Preparing Is Not Progress: I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start
• I Never Actually Start: Preparing Is Not Progress
• I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start: Why Preparing Feels Like Progress and Isn't

See all 43 titles. Go to the book page.