Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done, Acuff Jon

For years, I thought my problem was that I didnt try hard enough. So I started getting up earlier. I drank enough energy drinks to kill a horse. I hired a life coach and ate more superfoods. Nothing worked, although I did develop a pretty nice eyelid tremor from all the caffeine. It was like my eye was waving at you, very, very quickly.

Then, while leading a thirty-day online course to help people work on their goals, I learned something surprising: The most effective exercises were not those that pushed people to work harder. The ones that got people to the finish line did just the opposite-- they took the pressure off.

Why? Because the sneakiest obstacle to meeting your goals is not laziness, but perfectionism. Were our own worst critics, and if it looks like were not going to do something right, we prefer not to do it at all. Thats why were most likely to quit on day two, the day after perfect--when our results almost always underper-form our aspirations.

The strategies in this book are counterintuitive and might feel like cheating. But theyre based on studies conducted by a university researcher with hundreds of participants. You might not guess that having more fun, eliminating your secret rules, and choosing something to bomb intentionally works. But the data says otherwise. People who have fun are 43 percent more successful Imagine if your diet, guitar playing, or small business was 43 percent more suc-cessful just by following a few simple principles.