Slapping my Past Self

You've perhaps heard the question, "If you could travel back in time, what would you tell your younger self?" People usually go deep—invest in Bitcoin early, don't date that person, call your grandparents more. Me? My answer has always been immediate and embarrassingly practical: finish what you started.

Crazy right? Not world peace or stock tips—just don't bail when things get boring.

I have a graveyard of projects that proves it. I'd get hit with inspiration, dive in hard, solve the fun puzzles, feel that rush of "this is actually working," and then... hit the wall. The challenging problems are cracked, the core is built, and all that's left is the "fine polishing"—the tedious tweaks, the documentation, the testing edge cases, the making-it-pretty-for-others part. That's when boredom creeps in like an uninvited guest. Suddenly the next shiny idea looks way more exciting, and poof—I'm off chasing that one instead.

So many times. Too many.

It's not laziness, exactly. It's more like my brain is wired for the dopamine of novelty and problem-solving, not the slow grind of refinement. I read somewhere that a lot of creative types hit this—psychologists call it something like "completion aversion" or just the natural drop-off after the "flow state" high. The hard parts are rewarding because they're hard; the easy-but-necessary parts feel pointless once the challenge is gone. So you chase the next hit of inspiration instead of sticking the landing.

And yeah, it stings looking back. Those unfinished things aren't just clutter in folders or half-built prototypes in the garage—they're little regrets. What if I'd shipped that app? What if I'd published the story? What if I'd just sanded the damn table? They pile up, and over time they start whispering, "You could have finished that."

But here's the hopeful part: hopefully I've thoroughly learned that lesson by now. (Fingers crossed, knock on wood, etc.) Lately I've been forcing myself to push through the polish phase on smaller things—finishing a blog post even when the wording feels meh, completing a home repair job to the actual end instead of "good enough." It's not glamorous. No fireworks. Just quiet satisfaction when it's done-done, not mostly-done.

If I could actually hop in a time machine and sit down with 20-something Curtis (probably knee-deep in yet another half-baked side project), I'd skip the dramatic speech. I'd just say: Dude. Finish what you started. The joy isn't only in the breakthrough—it's also in the boring victory of shipping it, sharing it, or at least closing the tab without guilt.

The projects that get finished? They stick around. They teach you more. They sometimes even turn into something useful. The ones that don't? They just haunt your hard drive.

So yeah. Finish what you started. Even when it's dull. Especially when it's dull.