This can often be the case for freelancers doing work for a client.

Hard to do as it’s not always aligned with our vision, our identity.

We have to work to find the balance; fulfilling client requirements while injecting our own skills, style, and approach.

The good news is this work can be easy to finish.

There’s a deadline, accountability, a feedback loop, and probably a payment.

Our own projects are often the other way around: easy to do, hard to finish.

Sure, we get blocked and sometimes struggle to make progress, but when we find that groove the work flows easily. 

What can be much harder is to finish. There are often no deadlines, little accountability, few feedback loops, and no guarantee of it working – let alone getting paid for it.

This being said, sometimes we’ll find the inverse to be true. And every so often, the work can be both easy to do and easy to finish.

When that happens there’s probably one of three things going on:

• we cut a corner
• the work didn’t really matter
• we’ve found an incredible state of flow – either through our ability to do great work itself, the systems we’ve built around it, or a combination of both

Whatever the case, we can seek to make more progress in either doing or finishing by simply noticing what works, and applying it to what doesn’t.