Daily Deliverables
Structure your day as a sequence of small completions, not one endless slog
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 74%
Burkeman makes the case that finishing things releases a distinct kind of energy, counterintuitively, since you'd expect slogging to the end of something to deplete you. The method is to reconceive your working day as a sequence of finishings rather than reserving completion for the rare big project that wraps every few months. He deliberately borrows the soulless corporate word 'deliverable' because asking 'what's the deliverable here?' strips the drama and defines a concrete endpoint for each unit of work, including intermediate endpoints inside larger projects. This suits creative work especially because it aligns with what it actually means to be finite: we do one thing at a time in sequence whether we like it or not. Pushing to a completion point, even completing fifty words rather than a whole chapter, is a powerful way to generate momentum and treat yourself like a machine etching one defined output at a time.
Origin
Extracted from Oliver Burkeman's Modern Wisdom discussion of the 'magic of completion' chapter in Meditations for Mortals.
Core principles
- 01Finishing things releases energy rather than depleting it
- 02A working day is best conceived as a sequence of finishings, not one open-ended effort
- 03Define intermediate endpoints inside big projects, not just at the end
- 04Working one deliverable at a time honours the reality that we're always finite and sequential
How to run it
- 1
Ask what the deliverable is
Before a block of work, deliberately ask 'what's the deliverable here?' to define a concrete endpoint for the unit.
Pro tip The word is intentionally corporate and undramatic, which is the point: it forces a defined output.
- 2
Set intermediate endpoints
For big projects, define endpoints along the way rather than only at the final finish line.
- 3
Take each unit to completion
Push to an actual completion point, even if it's just finishing fifty words rather than the whole chapter.
Pro tip Think of yourself as a CNC machine etching one defined output: 'what will be completed at the end of this?'
- 4
Chain finishings through the day
Move completion from something you do every few months to something you do repeatedly throughout the day.
Pro tip Let the energy each completion releases feed momentum into the next unit.
In the wild
Rather than treating a chapter as the only meaningful completion, Burkeman sets a deliverable as small as fifty finished words. By pushing to that intermediate completion point he taps the energy that finishing releases, which he notes is counterintuitive because you'd expect slogging to the end of something to deplete rather than energise you. Framed as a CNC machine doing one defined etching at a time, the day becomes a chain of small finishings that keep creative momentum alive instead of one open-ended, dramatic, never-quite-done effort.
→ Small, defined completions generate momentum and make creative work feel progressive rather than interminable.
Common mistakes
Reserving completion for big milestones
Only ever finishing at the end of a months-long project denies you the daily energy that frequent small completions release.
Setting endpoints too large to reach
If the only defined deliverable is a whole chapter, the day rarely produces a real completion and the momentum benefit is lost.
Is it for you?
Best for
Creatives and knowledge workers whose projects rarely reach visible endpoints.
Not ideal for
Work that genuinely resists decomposition or where forced endpoints would fragment deep continuous thought.
From the transcript
“conceiving of your working life your working day as a sequence of like finishings”
“what's the deliverable here what's the deliverable here”
From the episode
8 Unexpected Lessons To Be Less Hard On Yourself - Oliver Burkeman - #840
Oliver Burkeman