Question about a half-built coffee table in my garage that I quit 14 months ago
I was at a buddy's place in Akron on Saturday and he showed me this half-finished bookshelf he started two winters back. It has been sitting in his basement for 14 months with the same three boards clamped together. He told me his trick for getting unstuck was breaking the job into 20 minute chunks and only doing one chunk per day. That sounds dumb but he finished the whole thing in two weeks. I have a coffee table in my garage I quit on 14 months ago, legs are glued, top is cut, I just stopped. The part that got me was when he said he never works on it for more than 20 minutes, he just makes himself show up. I keep telling myself I need a full free Saturday to finish mine. Has anyone tried this chunk thing on a project they had already given up on, and did it actually work or did the project just sit there with slightly more progress?
Yeah I did this with a workbench I walked away from for like a year and a half. What finally got me moving was just walking out there with my coffee some mornings and doing one small thing, sanding one board, whatever, even if it was 15 minutes. The trick is you gotta kill the idea that it needs to be a whole Saturday thing. That full free weekend never comes, man, that's why it sat for 14 months. Show up for a little bit, do one dumb task, and after a week or two you'll look at it and go oh, it's basically done.