We all have one hiding over there in the groan zone. It’s the unfinished project that lives in a strange sort of limbo. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb reminds us in The Black Swan (Random House, 2007), the longer a project goes unfinished, there is an exponential increase in the time to finish the project. Sound familiar?

So, you see them lurking there getting dusty and forlorn, what should you do about them? How can you move these projects from limbo to liberation (aka completion)?

Here’s my project liberation check list:

Look at all your unfinished projects. Which ones are still relevant? What’s important, and what no longer matters?

What can be recycled? Those projects that have expired or no longer matter can still be useful. Look at them, and see if any of the project assets can be reused somewhere else. For example, were there any lessons learned that you can reapply? Why did these projects stall; what put them on the back burner; and could you have prevented it? Also, go through your documentation, and pull out any golden nuggets such as charts or research or any data you can build on.

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