' Anyone else had Difficulty Finishing Things?

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Be it education, creative projects, cleaning, or whatever kind of endeavour it maybe, a re-occurring theme throughout my life has been going 95% of the way there and then, deciding I don't give a damn, sabotaging things, or just not giving it my all.

My dear mother suggests it may be "fear of failure", I fear she may be right. But what ever the cause, I wonder if you've encountered this phenomenon too? Perhaps we can shed some light on the matter. Is it common to AS, to all people, or just specific to certain characters?

I'm not sure about it being an AS thing.
I quit most things I do now, whilst when I was younger I was the kind of person who wouldn't stop until I'd completed something to perfection. Now the majority of the time I quit before I ever finish anything. I think it's partly that I 'fear the failure' (I usually quit something because I feel I'm not doing it very well).

Say drawing, for example; I'll start it and get a decent way through... But then I'll think "Why am I even doing this? There's far better artists out there, I'd never get that good and I could never sell anything."

I quit near everything I start. On a lot of things, I've learned that if I do this, I resist coming back to it because if I do come back to it, I will hoard things related to it even if it is years before I get back. Every year when I clean out everything to see what i can get rid of, I dump a lot of stuff I picked up that I'm not using.

Also, I now watch out so I don't get into something that is a fad for me.

Yep. I'm always starting new things and quitting halfway through. I desperately want and need to stop this.

I've often had trouble finishing what I plan to write because I worry I'll have spent weeks or months on it only to find out that my idea of good is everyone else's idea of bad. This time around I have a supportive beta reader and guinea pig, as well as a lot of personal reasons for completing it and preferences that are more important to me than outside opinion. I also try to keep to a schedule.

I'm still writing stuff from back in college. I have a box of notebooks that I can refer to, but for the most part it's all been converted to digital a while back so at least I can hang onto it without it cluttering everything up beyond my hard drive. I don't seem capable of sticking to a schedule because I can't seem to make when I'm inspired or motivated match up when I have free time.

I have no idea how I'd even navigate physical copies these days... if I had a hand left at all after writing and rewriting all those pages.

I can't really control when I'm inspired, either, but twenty minutes of brainstorming and editing or an hour of casual research is still work done.

I can relate so much to this topic. I start a project so well, with such focus and drive. Then around halfway, I slow down, start to lose interest, and start getting bored.

One thing I do is do a what I call "limited multi-tasking." I may have five projects that I want/need to do. If I can, I will "nibble" on one project at a time. When I start to get bored, I stop, go to something else and start that.

I may start a big/hard project first, just to make some progress, but save a smaller/easier project later in the day, so that when I do finish that smaller/easier project, I will feel I have done something with my day instead of having 4 half finished projects and nothing really done for that day.

When I have dealt with "fear of failure" in my mind I then ask myself this, "Well, fine if you don't want to finish something because you are afraid of failing, then you have already failed, so can't fear it now." I play this mind game on myself to remind me that fear in this case has nothing to do with safety or such but is an illusion and just my opinion on my own actions. (make sense?)

Also, when I do finish spomething I usually feel anti-climatic and a little depressed, but then I remind myself that if I didn't do it, then no one would. In that case, I reward myself. Sometimes that works, sometimes not.

I hope I helped!

(oh one other thing... this post is a great example of almost not doing something because I felt it was a waste of time and would not help, but I told myself that I can not assume what others would think about this post and that was rude of me.... then I felt who cares if I fail with this post because I was not purposely trying to hurt anyone, but help. I can't be faulted for trying to help someone on a message board)

Very familiar with this one. When I have trouble sticking with something, I'll tell myself "Five minutes before making a decision". If need be, this can be a continuous loop.

Yes, definitely.

I quit chess before I even started it (wanted to spend the money on something else), and I quit orientation and soccer.
There are plenty of books and games I never finished. I used to write stories but very few of them was ever finished.
I have quit high school 3 times.
I start doing things, then can't be bothered to finish. There are even plenty of thread replies I have started but not posted because for whatever reason I re-decided.

Really great feedback Guys and Gals!, thank you for contributing

It is a question that is asked in many aspie tests, so even if it is common, it is probably even more common with aspies, because it has to do with executive functions, which tend to be afflicted in some degree by aspergers syndrome.

Yes, I have that tendency, too. Especially when I have a serious interest in something, I tend to avoid/procrastinate it because I feel I shouldn't do it just casually, but should do it when I can concentrate on it 100%, which almost never happens. I can easily do and complete things that I'm only mildly interested in because I don't really care too much about how the results are. And I think your (the OP's) mother is right - I'm in a way afraid of failure, too. My theory about it is that I'm such a perfectionist that I can only accept a really perfect result as a success and that I consider anything less than perfect as a failure. In this way I can't see a realistic possibility of a success. So I just give up before completing whatever I'm trying. I wonder if the same applies to other people here, too. I'd say it could be related to AS, but I can't say for sure.

Allow yourself to do less than perfect. It is hard to learn, but unless you can be more interested in the process itself (whilst having your goal in mind), - you are in for an uneven fight.
Small but good every day does it.

I have difficulty beginning them too.

This was really hard for me to do growing up. I saw everything as either, you did it correct and proper, or you failed. There was no in between. It was all black or white. My mother couldn't seem to get this into me that life isn't black and white and even when you do everything correct, you could fail, and when you half-assed it you could succeed. It was very confusing, but eventually, I figured this out. Eventually was longer than everyone else.