Stay completely enthusiastic on a project from start to finish.

In college we were given semester-long architecture projects. For my very first project, I devoted ALL of my free time to working on it. EVEN time I should have spent sleeping. I was averaging four hours of sleep a night or less when I finished it. When I did sleep, I was dreaming about cutting pieces of wood, and drawing floor plans. No surprise that, when I was done, I immediately got the flu, and was too sick to study for my other finals (oh well).

The next semester was similar – still not getting much sleep, still spending most of my time in the studio, still trying to pick glue off of my fingers in the shower… but this time, I had a wedding to go to 2 days before the review… so I had to work extra hard to get everything done in time. It was kind of nice to attend the review after having a normal night’s rest!

Slowly, with each of the following six semesters, I got more and more burnt out on spending all of my time working on the same project. I still thought about it all the time, and was passionate about its design, but I just didn’t have it in me anymore to be so energetic about it from start to finish.

So I would start off a project all excited, then be thinking “meh, whatever” by the end. This was especially true my semester in Rome, and my entire fifth year.

This is a really bad characteristic. It doesn’t mean I start a lot of things and don’t get them done, it just means I start a lot of things and don’t finish them quite as I’d like to because I’m so burnt out. And out of time. And under pressure to get them done.

I’ve really been fighting that in my job. So far I’ve been successful, but sometimes you get to the point where you just want to say “I give up” or “I don’t care anymore.”

Or… is it just me?