Finish what you start

Close the open tabs in your mind

April 15, 2026 [Welcome to my Medium channel. I hope you find value in this article. Please clap 20+ times to increase reach, share and subscribe 🫶]

“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It takes effort to start, it takes discipline to finish.

‘Tab Hoarding’ is more common today than we’d like to admit. Source:https://www.thecrimson.com/flyby/article/2018/2/28/what-tabs-say-about-you/

** Tab Hoarding: A behavioral tendency to keep a massive number of browser tabs open, often driven by the fear of losing information (“FOMO”) * Tab Overload:* The state where so many tabs are open that you can no longer distinguish between them or manage the information, often leading to mental fatigue. “Too Many Tabs” Syndrome:* A term for the anxiety, decreased productivity, and slow computer performance caused by excessive tabs.

We all know Aesop’s famous fable about the hare and the tortoise — how they challenged each other to a race, with every animal expecting the hare to win easily. Indeed, at the start, the hare zoomed off leaving the tortoise to bite the dust, however he decided to take a rest considering his sizeable gap ahead of the slow tortoise. Unfortunately, he slept so long that the tortoise ended up winning the race!

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There is an important lesson here: Ideas are like seeds. They only become valuable when they are planted, watered and produce fruit.

Story no. 2 below, tells of Sandeep who despite how much potential he had, remained a failure for so long until he changed one key behavior. It teaches us that no matter how much potential we have, we can only achieve real success when we nurture that potential until it turns into tangible results.

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Consider such terms as above — Tab overload, Tab hoarding, Too-many-tabs syndrome. A study found that over 50% of people feel they cannot close their tabs, while 30% struggle with “tab hoarding,” often leading to stress, decreased productivity, computer crashes etc. [Carnegie Mellon University]

Tips:

1. Before starting anything, think carefully about what the expected cost would be. Yes, whilst you shouldn’t wait until you have everything figured out, you should at least have a reasonable idea (of most) of what you would need to carry out the project. Listen to Jesus:

Luke 17:28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it — 29 lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him…

2. Handle your biggest/most relevant task first — and commit to doing only that until it is completed. This helps to drastically eliminate distractions and prevent abandoned projects.

3. Learn to say NO. Regardless how attractive, enticing, someone or something is, you need to be able to discern what is good/relevant for you at your present state of life, and to completely avoid everything else.

Question for today: What do you have pending on your to-do list? What low-hanging fruit can you complete in the next hour or two? Get on it.

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Please share your thoughts in the comments.