Almost Finished Is a Place Where Projects Go to Die

Somewhere on your hard drive, or in your garage, or in a notebook you haven't opened since winter, there is a project sitting at ninety percent.

The app that works on your machine but was never submitted to the store. The manuscript that needs one more read-through it has been needing for two years. The business that was ready to trade except for a pricing page. The course that's recorded but not edited. The renovation that is one skirting board and a coat of paint from done.

You didn't abandon these things. Abandonment is a decision, and no decision was ever made. They just stopped moving, all at roughly the same place, and the place is always the same: nearly there.

If it were one project, you could blame circumstance. The timing was bad, the market shifted, life got loud. But when three or four projects have all stalled at the same coordinates, circumstance stops being a convincing explanation. Something about the last ten percent itself is doing this.