By Leo Babauta

If you could regularly complete your most meaningful projects, what would that be worth to you?

For many people, they’d be creating the impact they want, and would be going much further in fulfilling their purpose in life. It would go a long way toward creating the life that you want.

But of course, there are some tough challenges that stand in the way of that:

  • Self-doubt and fear of failure
  • Distraction, avoidance, procrastination
  • Focusing on smaller, less important (but easier) tasks
  • Not making time for focusing on the project
  • Feeling overwhelmed and not taking action
  • Losing focus and getting discouraged
  • Feeling a lack of progress and a feeling of pointlessness

These kinds of challenges get in the way for all of us. In this post, I’ll share crucial strategies for dealing with these challenges, and also invite you to join my Fearless Mastery 2025 program to get support to finally complete your most meaningful project.

Get Clear on Purpose

The mistake many people make at the start is not having any clear direction. What would you like to accomplish this year? If you set a direction for yourself, you’ll have a clear sense of purpose.

If you don’t know what project you’d like to take on this year, spend a few days contemplating it. Then just choose something. Anything. It’s better to choose something from your gut than it is to get caught up in indecision and choose nothing.

Create a Weekly Ritual

You can get really good at completing projects if you build a few key habits. The first one is a weekly planning ritual:

  • Review how your last week went (did you hit your targets?)
  • Make a note of what you learned & what adjustments are needed
  • Make commitments for this coming week
  • Block off time to focus on the project & hit your commitments

This should take about 20 minutes each week. I recommend Sundays or Mondays.

If you do this ritual every week, you will move this project forward.

Get Good at Daily Focus Sessions

The next habit to form is daily focus sessions (let’s say, 5 days a week). This is the time you’ll spend working on the project — whether it’s 30 minute sessions or multiple hours. Here’s the habit:

  • Every morning, spend a few minutes getting clear on what you’re going to accomplish today (with regards to your project commitments for the week)
  • Also get clear on what time block you’ll use
  • When the time block starts, practice getting into the project with as little distraction or avoidance as possible

This takes practice. You won’t be good at it at first. Just practice.

Learn to Emotionally Regulate

The main reason people don’t do the focus session — and thus fail at their projects — is that there’s some emotion they don’t want to deal with. Fear, anxiety, frustration, disappointment, a feeling of pointlessness, etc. These emotions are natural and universal, and yet we often don’t know how to deal with them.

The answer is simple: emotional regulation. All you have to do is acknowledge the feeling, let yourself feel it, breathe, and soothe yourself. If you can do that, the feeling becomes less intense, and not such a big deal.

Then you can move forward with the next step in your project. Open a document, do the first action. It becomes much more possible if you learn to soothe the emotion that would normally block you.

Get Support & Accountability

Another habit that people resist is accountability — making commitments to one or more people, and then holding yourself accountable for how you did with those commitments.

We resist this because we fear looking bad or feeling bad about not holding to the commitments. But we’re practicing emotional regulation! So it’s cool if we feel bad sometimes — it’s going to be a part of any meaningful work.

So instead, make yourself more effective by using the habit of accountability to move yourself forward and to see where you’re getting stuck.

If you’re getting stuck, get some support from others. Let yourself be humbled, and don’t feel like you need to do this alone. It’s hard enough as it is.

In my Fearless Mastery program , the key to our effectiveness is that we support each other’s big goals. I offer coaching for anyone who is stuck, and there’s a group of people supporting each other on their shared journeys. It makes a huge, huge difference.

Celebrate Progress & Milestones

A great habit to form is to celebrate any progress, no matter how little. We’re not taught to do this, but if you do, it will help you to feel a sense of progress. There’s nothing more motivating than feeling like you’re making progress.

Celebrate small victories, and big milestones. Make it a non-negotiable habit.

Embrace Challenges to Create Transformation

You’ll inevitably get stopped at some point. Maybe at a lot of points. That might be taken as a sign of failure, and feel discouraging. But instead, use these challenges to grow beyond your current limitations.

For example, if you are avoiding your focus sessions because you’re afraid of failure … let yourself take a deeper look at this fear. Notice how it has shaped your life. Notice how long you’ve felt this fear. Notice how you react to it.

Then practice reacting to it in a new way. Try some new actions. Try emotional regulation. Try telling yourself some new thoughts, instead of just believing the old ones.

With practice, you’ll form an entirely new way of being whenever the fear comes up. This is inner transformation, and it produces transformative results.

Join Fearless Mastery to Complete Your Big Project

Completing a big, audacious, meaningful project can be incredibly transformative. That’s why it’s the focus of Fearless Mastery 2025 — every member of my small group coaching and mastermind program is focused on completing a big project or launching a business.

Would you like to be a part of this?

Here’s what the program offers:

  • Weekly calls (every Tuesday) to get coaching, support, accountability, teachings and more.
  • Thursday office hours for more coaching and support
  • Daily focus sessions
  • Small group accountability
  • 1-on-1 coaching with me each month
  • A retreat in Mexico in May
  • Video teachings from me
  • A community forum for weekly accountability, celebrations of victories, and more

Check out Fearless Mastery 2025 , and apply today to set up a call with me to explore whether this is a good fit for you.

Early bird discount: if you sign up in the next week (by Feb. 5, 2025), you can get a 10% early bird discount.

This is the year to make things happen for yourself. Let’s do this together.