done because you would have a buggy, clunky product. When the details are done right, it looks seamless and you forget about how much work went into finishing.

Unfortunately, letting these boring details go is akin to undoing all the exciting work you already put in on the project. If you want the beautiful thing you built to stay standing, you have to finish it out right.

How To Make a Great Finish
a Priority

The next time you are hard at work on a big project, make sure you allot time and energy for a strong finish. Set aside time in your project plans for the boring detail work; that way, it won’t catch you by surprise. Make it seem just as important as all the rest of the work you do—because it is.

As you get to work on your next big goal, keep in mind these three ways to make sure you finish strong and make the biggest possible impact with your work.

1. Think Big Picture

When you are working on a project, always keep the bigger-picture goals in mind. What is the overall impact of this project on your company? What does your manager see as your team’s biggest goal?

You may remember an amazing so-
lution you came up with early in the
project, but your manager or executive
team—who were not in the trenches
with you every day, and who instead are
formation every day that it is impos-
sible to remember everything com-
pletely. As a result, our brains have to
give priority to certain pieces of infor-
mation over others.

This means we usually have the clearest recall for things that were associated with strong emotions and things that happened most recently. This is known as the Peak-End Rule ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak– end_rule).

This applies to all areas of our lives. It’s why you should always stay at the nicest hotel at the very end of your vacation—it’s the one you will remember most when you think about that trip.

At work, your performance reviews are usually weighted toward the work you did most recently. Why? Because it is freshest in your manager’s mind.

So, when you are working on a project, think about how it will be perceived by your leadership, keeping in mind the importance of the end result.

While you might remember the long hours you worked to build a new feature one night, your boss may have a different perspective. If, for example, that feature you built had bugs that had to be fixed at the last minute, or operational problems that generated negative attention, that’s what the boss will remember more than the many hours you put in.

Therefore, if you want to make a big
impact at work, you need to take advan-
tage of the Peak-End Rule by ensuring
every project you work on has a suc-
cessful, strong conclusion. If you are in
a position to present the project to your
leadership, make sure they see how
your hard work applies to their goals
and the things that are most important
to them.

Why So Few People Finish Strong

Starting work on a new project or goal is usually an exciting time. In the beginning, there is a lot of momentum. You are excited to tackle a big problem, and energy is high in meetings. The first 80% of a project is all about building up; there is a thrill in creating something new.

By the end, though, energy is low. You push to get things done by a deadline, and you procrastinate on the boring stuff that still has to get done, like extra testing, polishing, documentation, and boundary cases you missed earlier.

The less elegant work is not as much fun to work on, so people don’t really work on it. Plus, there is very little recognition for this kind of work.

Our brains are resistant to working on tasks that don’t seem to offer some kind of reward. They seem too small, or too tedious. It can be mentally, and even physically, taxing to spend time on a job that you do not want to do or know you will not be directly rewarded for.

These mundane tasks, when done correctly, make the problems they are solving invisible. You would only ever notice if that work had not been I M

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