An essential quality for a researcher: finishing things

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I know a senior researcher that divides people into two categories: people that finish things and people that don't. He only hires people that finish things. This is such an essential quality for a researcher. Projects are long, they can take years, sometimes we lose sight of them, we encounter difficulties, and then..., they stay unfinished, sometimes even with a draft version of the paper. 

As a group leader, I can make people finish things by setting up deadlines, but this works up to a point. The best is to find inner mechanisms for this to work. On this, I do not have much advice because finishing what I start comes naturally to me. Actually, I get nervous when things begin to last way longer than they should. It takes too much headspace.

But I can tell you this: if you tend to start things and not finish them, find the psychological reasons behind this first. For example, a classical reason for not finishing things is perfectionism. I always say "there are two types of thesis (or papers): the perfect one and the finished one". Since you can always keep improving your text, as a perfectionist, you never finish. I have seen many instances of this. Then I have to get rather serious and put a hard deadline on the student, otherwise, I know that it will never be finished.

I like the point of view that I heard from some artists: an artist does not finish their work, they abandon them. Yes, at some point, you "abandon" what you do, you let it be as final, even though you know it is not finished, in the sense that you could always do more.

So, declare it finished, and move on with your life. 


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