SOFA - Start Often Finish rArely
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Finishing, as in will power, focus, and vision, is like a muscle that you can take to the gym.
This advice is the equivalent of going for a run one day and never picking up the habit. I don't think it will lead to fitness.
SOFA gets one thing right which is it reduces the pressure and the expectations. But it doesn't seem like an approach to life which results in anything permanent. This post literally says "nothing is permanent, nothing lasts" which is a nihilistic and self-defeating view of life - perhaps technically true but not useful. Contrast with "play long term games" which is the idea that good things compound over years and even decades and this compounding is how you can lead a truly extraordinary life.
So with Clear's concept of minimum viable habits the focus is on building something permanent (the habit) but the expectations are removed, which makes it feel easy. If you want to be a runner, you start by setting an alarm and putting on your running shoes every day. That's it, once the shoes are on, you declare victory and you may take them right back off again and go on with your day, running is strictly optional (and even discouraged at the start).
After doing this for a while it's going to be second nature. It will become an unconscious habit to put on those shoes at the same time every day, and it will also feel a little ridiculous that you're not even stepping out the door. It will then feel completely natural to take the next step and walk outside and enjoy the fresh air as part of the habit. Once you're doing that regularly, it's almost inevitable that you'll start taking a small walk or something and one day boom you've made it a jog. Three years later if it's really what you want you've become a serious runner and practicing for your first marathon.
It really works in my experience (it got me going to the gym, improved my work productivity and improved my diet). The key is your perspective: you want to build an extensive new, permanent habit that will improve your life for many years to come. But this is hard to do so you're layering on one easy piece at a time, removing the friction.
It doesn't require manning up and being superhuman. Just the desire for the change, some patience and the willingness to take the first step.
I like open source software. And I could write some code that works for me, then generalise it to be useful to more people, then increase the robustness so it's easier for users who aren't the author, then clearly document it, then make a flashy website for it, then do branding and marketing to get users, then add support for OSes I don't use and languages I don't speak, then build a community of contributors and maintain a presence on reddit and twitter and stackoverflow and discord and github and mailing lists, then engage with the community with polite professionalism at all times, then do paperwork like choosing a license and a code of conduct and a security policy, then convince major distributions to package it, then maintain it for 30 years.
So long as it's a recreational hobby, I'll do whichever steps I feel like. Marketing? Support? Fundraising? Test coverage? Nah, I don't think I will, I'd rather spend that time going on a bike ride.
On the other hand, for things that aren't a recreational hobby? That might be a different matter.
I can assure you that, in spite of not really mastering or finishing any of these things and being kind of flaky about it, it has at least lead to very good fitness.
In the same vein, I see no reason you can't simply practice and get in the habit of learning and being curious even if you never master a specific craft.
That's not true, at least not for many procrastinators. I've been a procrastinator my whole life. It wasn’t until my mid-30s that I found a method that made me productive (going from 2-3 hours of work a day to 9-10 hours). Honestly, when it comes to productivity, I’m killing it. However, it hasn’t trained my "finish it" muscle at all. As soon as I'm not body doubling, I revert to my old self and immediately start procrastinating.
What was this method ?
Unfortunately, the "why" isn't always clear. I've been procrastinating for as long as I can remember, and as a co-founder of a body doubling platform, you'd think I'd know why I procrastinate. But I don't. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure it out, and it's still a mystery to me. I'm a hedonistic procrastinator, but I don't fully understand what's behind it.
Back to the point: if you're looking for a solution, don't blindly try every method someone suggests, as it can be a colossal waste of time. Some people spend weeks or months trying to make Pomodoro work for them, without realizing it simply won't. If you're a hedonistic procrastinator, Pomodoro probably isn’t the best fit. Similarly, people who struggle with clarity on what to do may benefit more from to-do lists than from "Just do it" approaches.
If procrastination is wreaking havoc on your life and you don’t know how to overcome it, feel free to contact me (check my bio). Disclaimer: I run a virtual body doubling platform (WorkMode.net), but I'm happy to talk and try to help, even if you don't want to try the platform.
> You can be finished with your project whenever you decide to be done with it. And "done" can mean anything you want it to be. Whose standards of completion or perfection are you holding yourself to anyway? Forget about those! Something is done when you say it is. When it's no longer interesting. When you've gotten a sufficient amount of entertainment and experience from it. When you've learned enough from it. Whatever, whenever. Done is what you say it is.
If you already say the goal is fitness, you're not doing SOFA. The whole point is to accrue experience, experiment, discover, not a predefined state. You don't SOFA a specific sport to lose weight, you SOFA when you want to find a sport you like enough that you will be able to do it regularly.
Lately, I envy my better half who reads all books from start to finish, and also manages to be very consistent in teaching specific things to our children. This is Doing More With Less in practice -- in the long run, children obviously benefit more from that as compared to inconsistent creative bursts that I (currently) represent. Order is much harder to accomplish than mess; I think ultimately, good learning = keeping order, and being consistent about what not to do.
(I do remember Nassim Taleb advocating to read books "ADDHD-style", as in, swapping right away when you feel bored, though. And he is quite good with his probability stuff, so threre's that. Also, I quite like Perl and Larry Wall's views on the inherent messiness of human language -- I think he is spot-on with this. But... as a layperson, it's nonetheless way too easy to get lost inside this mindset. Managing complexity is an art, I guess. Or, as somebody once wrote on the Perlmonks forums, "freedom is hard".)
i.e. Once I'm comfortable the remaining work can be accomplished by rote skill application, it feels more like a chore.
At this point, your "self" has changed. You have a new perspective and gains compared to when you embarked on your journey. You have a clearer picture of the sacrifices you require to continue making progress to your original goal. If you knew then what you know now, you would not have set such a terrible goal, though you would perhaps have targeted this halfway-point where you are now.
At this point, it is time to
> Just KonMari[4] that shit: have a moment of gratitude and appreciation for the experience and the things you learned and the ways in which you benefited from it. Thank it with conviction for having served its purpose, and then let it go and dismiss it. There. Done.
In this case, and in the situations the article wants to address, this is perhaps the calculus at play, where it is not about willpower, but that with a change in environment, continuing would entail an unacceptable sacrifice for a goal that no longer has the same meaning it used to hold. Although I find it too absolute and unbalanced in it's opinion, as is yours.
The result has been thousands of side projects but nothing I can actually put on a portfolio or monetize (and as a result, poverty).
It's sort of bizarre and hilarious to see people glorify and promote it?
Do normal people have to make a significant conscious effort not to finish what they start?!
I believe their issue is that they can't even start.
The "I'm not allowed to have fun or make mistakes" mindset seems to be drilled into people hard by the education system. I also suppose the survival fear adds "this time and energy I invest should pay off somehow" to the balance, at least it does for me (when considering significant projects).
My "backdoor" to working on many projects is that most of my projects only last a few hours, so the question of "is it worth the investment" never really factors into it.
I don't think that's it. It is the knowledge that, please forgive my blunt comparison, a spoiled child that wants this and than that and then that other thing and so on, will never get fulfilment.
The trick to good fulfilment is (sometimes anxious) persistence followed by some redemption.
An example. For work, there's some hardware related software bug that is nagging me already for some time. I want to find the fix. For that, i need to read docs and schematics, talk to people, do experiments and fail quite often. Finally i will have a mental model good enough to understand and fix the problem. The road can be frustrating, but i know fixing it will be fulfilling, and that keeps me going. Also the fact that some people are relying on/anticipating the solution, helps with my motivation.
If i just would try some other discipline every other day, i would never get such fulfilment.
No, some things are hard and take significant conscious effort to complete regardless of how "normal" you are. Especially things that pay well.
It’s interesting to see most people here connecting ”starting many projects for fun” with procrastrinating, and also wanting to fix that with discipline. For others the situation is completely different. The grass is greener on the other side I guess: me as an ambitious person actually _want_ to procrastrinate more, and don’t see it as a bad thing to be less outcome-focused.
To finish something in such a way that a customer will be willing to pull their credit card out and pay for it is a very difficult point to arrive at.
I never tried this approach and yet I have 7 failed projects under my belt. Only 1 was a success but it only lasted for 3 years.
Rather than write am application, maybe I will just write a module, or a useful script someone else can use to build or improve an application. I am much happier with this approach so far.
It's definitely a lot easier if you set yourself goals which don't depend on other people. Having goals which depend on things that are outside of your control is a sure way to become miserable.
But if you focus on building stuff for its own sake and don't worry about financial success, you will be a lot happier because those goals are within your control. You will build the product and you will achieve your personal vision. Nobody else will care but that's going to be OK because you will prove to yourself that you're a capable individual and that's satisfying in itself.
(Think about a famous photographer who's showing a few great pictures you could never have made yourself. Well, he isn't showing the 10.000 others he made but were not good enough)
I don't know about anyone else, but I have learned far more from my mistakes than I have from my successes.
An interesting philosophy, but I don’t think marriage is the best place to apply it. Writing a README and then never starting a project has practically no consequences. Same for picking up a book and then ditching it after a few minutes. Marriage? That’s a whole different ball game, especially when children are involved.
Start a lot of long term relationships, finish the one that sticks when both partners are mature and more or less done growing up.
I think there’s another shakeup period (statistically) in your mid to late 40’s. That seems related to when kids start being old enough that they don’t act as a forcing function as much.
There's strong value in staying with a first partner, like a high school sweetheart. Growing together through life's challenges creates deep emotional bonds and shared experiences. Long-term stability comes from building trust over time and avoiding the emotional toll of repeated breakups.
Couples who navigate growth together often develop stronger, more resilient partnerships.
To add to your point, I've also found that developing the relational skills necessary to bring a marriage relationship through tricky waters often leads to success in similar, but perhaps not so dire, circumstances.
It's also been common knowledge for some time now that children tend to do much better when stability is present in the home. If a child always thinks one of their parents might just up and leave one day, they tend to act accordingly (read: exhibit undesired behaviors).
I understand marriage isn't for everyone, and I certainly don't promote it as such, but I also wouldn't advise people to treat marriage as no more than something that can start today and end tomorrow, on a whim.
Encouraging relation instability creates children which don’t have the funding on their own to be students. It makes them great candidates for both student loans (US) and subsidies (EU). As a society, that’s what we want; It’s makes every individual miserable, but it fuels the need for public funding.
It’s not at all obvious this would be better, and none of the research suggests it’s better for kids for adults to stay in a troubled relationship. In fact the reverse - conflict in the home is a much stronger predictor of poor outcomes than divorce per se.
IIRC a low quality father is still better than none (barring abuse, though emotional neglect is now finally coming to be recognized as developmentally impactful), but I really don't know...
Nowhere in that wisdom did the word “first” appear.
If at “first” you don’t succeed, keep looking for that partner who, by character, and suitability to you, who will “ navigate growth together”.
——
I feel like there is a stay-with-your-first crowd that has a lot of wisdom to share, but logically needs to recognize that commitment to an unworkable situation isn’t really what they are trying to promote.
Props to those that find that person, who will co-invest, can be co-patient, co-flexible, co-loyal, co-appreciative, co-vision the first time.
But those things are just as great, and important to find, regardless of the ordinal.
—
I think I have that! Number 3. Wish me luck for the future, but 8 years in I am very and honored happy now.
That's what dating is for. It's not magic if you've got your priorities figured out.
I doubt most people have their priorities figured out before their 30s. I envy those who do.
But most people are just not wired for hedonism, regardless of any particular “faith”.
I haven’t seen much difference in hedonism between the non-religious and the religious. Lots of people in the latter category that make me go cross-eyed trying to figure out how they square their circles (I.e. do what they want, celebrate forgiveness for imperfection, out grow their own needs on their own schedule, but still manage to judge others.)
And the destructive “hedonists”, I.e. drug addicts, out of control sex addicts, are not really hedonists. They are almost always covering up real pain from some major trauma, anxiety, or hopelessness. Very few people really value a momentary high over long term satisfaction.
(Not nobody. I have seen “undamaged” people who fall into every momentary “pleasure” pit without brakes. But at least those I have seen, have all been mentally compromised.)
People change as they go through life. People who grow never stop learning how to be more themselves, less of what they were taught or expected to be, or finding new paths.
Even the positive side of change can introduce profound instability and unhappiness into a relationship.
The idea that if people would just do everything right, no relationship would need to break up is an unhealthy, and completely unrealistic, judgement.
And it inadvertently prioritizes relationships over the people actually in them.
An oath is an oath. You are an individualist, but social stability often matters more than the whims of individuals.
> The idea that if people would just do everything right, no relationship would need to break up is an unhealthy, and completely unrealistic, judgement.
When people are focused on their 'perfect wedding', you already know priorities are already way off. Marriages need to built on decent foundations, not just feelings. So, I can agree with you that a feelings-focused marriage in an impulse-driven society is unrealistic.
Perfect wedding? Who said anything about that?
> Marriages need to built on decent foundations
Well, yes. Did someone argue against that?
> not just feelings
"Feelings"? Which parent commenter said anything about that?
> So, I can agree with you that a feelings-focused marriage in an impulse-driven society is unrealistic.
Who are you talking to?
You have no idea who I am. How seriously I take commitments. How constructive I have remained in trying times. The end of my previous relationships involved serious circumstances, real people experiencing trauma and tragedy, and a great deal of lasting pain and loss.
Another person's misfortunes, which you have no knowledge of, are not a blank canvas you should be painting your careless assumptions and selective "values" on.
Just to be clear, I am not talking about you directly. I had no intention of judging you personally or upsetting you; I'm sorry if you took it that way.
> The idea that if people would just do everything right, no relationship would need to break up is an unhealthy, and completely unrealistic, judgement.
Let me try again: I think that what you're saying is true because of the social context. Would you agree that current society is not as conducive to long-term relationships?
> Would you agree that current society is not as conducive to long-term relationships?
There can be great value in long term relationships, but equally, there is great value in people's freedom to associate (or not), including the freedom to move in and out of personal relationships.
Those ideals could be framed as appositional, but they are synergistic.
Emphasizing only long term commitments, and stigmatizing break ups, has a long history of trapping countless people in abusive, unhappy, practically harmful relationships. And covering up that harm. Anti-breakup effectively becomes anti-transparency and pro-abuse.
Promoting the freedom to break up (not promoting break ups), helps people get out of bad relationships, and gives them another chance to find one.
So win-win.
So yes, I would say that a more free society is tautologically less conducive to long term relationships than one where they are highly prescribed.
But more conducive to people taking the health of their existing relationships seriously, and for finding a healthy relationship, however long that takes. And more conducive to people who are simply happier without a relationship (after suffering a bad one, or not), to do so without stigma.
If there is no communal support or watchfulness, then I guess those things are more likely, yes. Communities should help prevent abusive people from isolating their partners. I guess you would argue that the reality will always fall short of that and that communities can never be good enough.
> So win-win.
I'm not so sure it's necessarily a win for the kids.
I guess the main problem that you're not addressing is the possible lack of sustainability. Women do have a time limit if they want children, and of course there is personal freedom and all that, but if a culture that pushes personal freedom doesn't reproduce enough to replace itself then it may eventually be outbred by cultures that are less interested in personal freedom (e.g. their women might be forced to have more kids).
Often it's obvious things like kids, but it's also more pernicious things like expectations, comparisons, and even just different worldviews. A couple that grows up together can end up substantially more unified than is possible when you're joining lives after a decade of adulthood shaped by multiple partners.
There are obviously exceptions on both sides—first-timers that were toxic and 'experienced' partners who work well—but I certainly haven't seen an unqualified series of successes in the pattern described by OP.
Like I have 1 friend that married somebody who could reasonably be described as like a first serious relationship. Other than that… everybody tended to settle down after college, after a few more serious relationships. Nobody has gotten divorced yet (late 30’s). But (and this is being generous to myself), I’ll say I probably only have like 5 friends who I’d really be confident in saying much about the health of their relationships.
I think everybody in this thread is just making things up, tbh.
In that set, the only healthy marriages are first timers.
It's certainly not enough to draw any conclusions, but that's why all I actually argued is that OP's claimed success pattern doesn't seem to be true in my experience.
In my experience / opinion there is more to be said for a (gentle) bit of "playing the field" when you're in your teens and early twenties. Get that stuff out of the way - get to know some different people, different ways of being, different dynamics in sex / friendship / beliefs. Get to know yourself, mainly - figure out the person you are. Because you sure as shit don't know when you're 16, and you probably don't really know until you're 20 or probably even 25.
I'd say the same about getting out there and socialising - drink some drink, smoke some weed, take some mushrooms, travel the world. Don't get stuck in one thing straight away - in any direction, whether that's location or relationship or job or misc life situation.
Obviously everyone's MMV and there may be some people who do find that person when they're 16, but even then you've got to ask "how do you actually know that's the right person if you've never experienced any other kind of people?".
It's like travelling - say you got on a plane to an island on your first day of your first expedition away from home and had such a great time that you just stopped there, cancelling your future travel plans. Seems foolish and small minded to me.
Obviously long and beautiful and balanced relationships are what most of us aim for - and that's great and a brilliant thing if you find it (I'm ~25 years into the best possible relationship and marriage I could possibly have hoped for) - but I (and my wife) got here via a whole bunch of teen and early 20s relationships - some brilliant, some silly, some deeply hurtful, some short, some long, some with people that really suited us, some with complete howlers that were destined for disaster from day one. And that whole journey enabled us to discover who we were individually - and then when we met in our mid 20s we had a much better understanding of who and where we wanted to be, both individually and as a couple.
I've been immensely lucky in my journey but it's because of that journey, and it's because quite a lot of that journey was sometimes hard. Breakups and dating the wrong person and getting it wrong are part of that journey, and it sometimes hurts. So does life, and to expect otherwise is deeply unrealistic.
I'm already fascinated as my two kids (20/17) do this themselves - but my strong advice to them and to anyone else is that getting to know who you are involves bashing into the world a whole bunch - it can be painful and difficult but that's what a satisfying and realistic life looks like.
Marrying the wrong person and sticking with them does not make anyone happy. Some of us resist SOFA as late as our mid 40s on the basis that we made a promise, marriage is forever etc. it’s a massive mistake in almost every case. I know nobody who regrets a divorce and isn’t substantially happier after it.
If you have kids don’t blow up a relationship on a whim. But at the same time know that divorcing when kids are in their teens is absolutely no easier on them then when they are younger. In many ways my perspective is that it only makes life for the adults easier.
Thinking of someone I used to know who sarcastically referred to her many relationship blowups as "another fucking 'opportunity for growth'".
I see a lot of people talking past each other in this thread. There's several layers at work:
- "marriage is good"
- "people should make an effort to keep their relationship together"
- "people should make an effort to keep their relationship together, even at the cost of their own happiness, regardless of whether their partner is also doing the work"
- "marriage should be socially encouraged"
- "marriage should be socially enforced with censure of the unmarried"
- "marriage and its permanency should be legally enforced, regardless of harm including rape and domestic violence" (the pre-1950ish position)
You can see poster A making one of these statements and another poster B replying as if they'd said another one down the slippery slope.
My actual first girlfriend from high school isn't a person I kept in touch with, but from what I saw of the 20 year reunion a while back, she got really fat, became a bizarrely hardcore religious fundamentalist, and was extremely into Trump. I can't imagine a world in which a marriage with her would have worked. I don't see how you can possibly hope to imagine what a person might become decades later when you're 16.
I agree entirely with you about growing together through challenges and creating deep bonds through shared experiences. I'm just not sure why you think those don't continue happening past childhood. My 30s were by far the toughest decade due to unexpected physical challenges from spinal degeneration, and having someone there for it made all the difference in the world. I will love and cherish her forever for that, no matter what else happens. I didn't need to know her in high school for that to be possible.
And all the breakups of the past didn't take a toll on me. They taught me that loss isn't really that big of a deal. Life doesn't have to be constant and predictable. People come and go. Jobs come and go. The world turns, life goes on, and I'll be fine. Some other opportunity always comes along. More often than not, each one turns out to be better than the last one. I certainly don't want my wife to die and have no intention of ever divorcing her, but if something does happen, I have no doubt I'll be fine. Grieve, sure. Be crushed for maybe a year or two. But life is long as fuck and a year or two fades into nothing decades later when you're happy again.
I see the idea, but I turbo-fucked those relationships because I didn't understand how to communicate. It took me 2-3 LTRs to get a handle both on what I wanted, how to explain my needs/flaws/etc, and how to make space for somebody elses yada yada.
I admire people who managed to get through that stuff first time, but i feel like they've got to be the exception?
This doesn't really work great:
* Some people get really good at starting and not so good at finishing. They hurt a lot of people, eventually including themselves.
* Many people find it is too late to have the number of children they would have liked, or any children at all. This causes a lot of personal tragedy.
* Birth rates are well below replacement everywhere in the developed world, which is causing serious social problems.
People finish growing up?
Also menopause.
While, yes, it's more serious than writing a README, there is certainly often a point where it's better for all concerned to just pack it in.
Half-finished projects clutter your space and your mind. The biggest satisfaction is what I get from a project that is done-done. Not finishing anything will rob the satisfaction of a project.
Doing some Marie Kondo (deciding which things bring joy and getting rid of the rest) for your hobbies has been immensely liberating. Saying no to myself and not starting something new leaves space in my mind to enjoy other things much more.
So I would say, be picky about which hobby to take on and once you do it, be ready to invest some serious time into it. The joy you get out of a nice coffee table you built yourself from scratch is immeasurably greater than some tools, lumber and dust blocking your garage for years.
Often, when I take on something that I don't have the knowledge or experience to complete, I don't know precisely what I'm lacking in advance. By doing, I discover my limitations and can explore them - starting often, but not randomly. Eventually, I can approach the original project with additional insight and do more, having brought up a pillar of a fundamental to a requisite height to build on.
If I only leaned into my strengths, I might not feel the need to grow. That doesn't mean I leave things undone, but I recognize that if I only work towards goals that are immediately attainable, I won't ever develop the capacity to do more.
Put another way, the "time to first coffee table" is a function of SOFA for tooling acquisition. From there, the time investment required to build subsequent coffee tables is reduced by prior knowledge.
Might give more psychological closure, prevent me giving up, and could yield good results if there are a lot of cases where I was overthinking it.
I think both this and the article's "SOFA" are useful frameworks to deal with perfectionism.
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[0] - Which I should have done here, instead of spending 10 minutes trying to find the right words for the acronym, and ultimately failing.
> I think both this and the article's "SOFA" are useful frameworks to deal with perfectionism.
I feel it's understated how perfectionism and fear of failure are two sides of the same issue.
SOFA "call it quits and win" vs FEATHER "get to the end and celebrate" ideas both fight against an internalised conscientiousness where a thing is only done right if it's thoroughly explored and completed in all dimensions. Which isn't normally possible or worth it IMHO.
also known as FILIBUSTER - where you prioritize finishing stuff you like, pushing back the things you lack interest in, indefinitely ;P
- LIMP – Low-effort Implementation Makes Progress; or
- FINAL – Finish It Now, Amplify Later.
The first highlights how the point is to get somewhere, and floating around like a Brownian particle is not a good strategy for that. Setting up tiny gradients in the right direction will.
I like the second because it makes it clear that just because one finishes for now does not mean one cannot re-open the project later.
I think the article is trying to help with exactly that: it's telling people to give themselves permission to abandon half-finished projects without guilt or frustration - so that you won't be immobilized by expecting those feelings every time you think about dabbling in something new.
the secret to SOFA may be to STFU about it, as if you're the person who talks about things they've maybe done once or are going to do but never finished, you're kind of dumb, but if you just do stuff, you end up having some surprising skills.
the effect of not talking about it also creates an attribution bias in your favour, where after pulling a few surprise rabbits out of hats, you become the magic hat guy. if you talk about all the things you have kind of done, you're just opinionated. I've been both, and after more than a decade of being conscious of mostly STFU'ing, I can say that some humility can be a superpower.
I get that they're trying to go with "done does not need to mean perfect", but this way of putting it is too aggressive and I don't feel like it'll have good outcomes.
Exactly what I was going to write. I don't need a manifesto telling me to do this, this is what I do naturally unless I force myself to stick with something.
If anything, the "finish rarely [NOT never!]" bit is what needs emphasizing, yet the entire page is about the "start often" bit instead.
It's like thinking of an idea, and fleshing it out just enough to understand that my idea was possible, gives me a feeling of achievement that makes it redundant to actually finish implementing the idea.
“… to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until I feel like this is done and want to move on. And done is when I say it’s done.”
There won’t be a dry eye in the house!
Hacking?
In my world, hacking includes hacking your brain to finish what you have started.
This is more of a cracking.