One of my clients, who calls herself the Queen of Distractions, relayed this story to me. She starts her day by vacuuming her house. As she is focusing on the vacuuming and accomplishing this task, she accidentally turns over a plant. As she picks up the mess, she realizes that she has failed to water her plants this week, so she heads for the kitchen to get some water. As she is filling her water jug, she notices that her breakfast dishes are caked with a hard crust and filling the sink, so she stops her watering and begins to wash her dishes. On and on throughout her day, she repeats this habit, and consequently, when her husband walks in from work and asks her how her day was, she knows for sure she has worked hard all day, but she doesn’t have a thing to show for it. She has started but not finished a single task.

When I tell this story in my seminars, I get nervous laughter from the audience. Are we being distracted to the point of never finishing what we start? Nobody cares a whit about the projects we start; they only want to see the finished results. It does not matter how many times we start something, because success only comes when we finish.

When I was growing up in the hills of Kentucky, I lived in a rural area. My town consisted of 30 homes, about 80 people, and my father ran the country grocery store. It was the hub of the community. I sacked groceries, pumped gas, sliced bologna, and played checkers with all the men that came in every night for a spit and a chew as they sat around the old pot-belly stove, playing cards and talking about their “old ladies.” My mom insisted that I get involved in 4H, a rural-school organization that taught Christian character through projects like entomology, raising cattle, sewing, home improvement, and so forth. The one thing that she insisted upon was that I finish any project that I started, and she meant it. Every, and I mean every, project that I started, I finished. I still do to this day. My mother embedded this work ethic into my very pores. Thank heaven! It’s a joy to experience.