The road to failure is paved with many good intentions. Take a good look at the people you work with, and you'll find many Good Starters — individuals who want to succeed, and have promising ideas for how to make it happen.

...And then something happens. Somewhere along the way, they lose steam. They get bogged down with another project and start procrastinating or missing deadlines. Their projects take forever to finish - or never gets finished at all.

Does all this sound familiar? If you are guilty of being a Good Starter, but a lousy finisher — at work or in your personal life — you have a common problem.

More than anything else, becoming a "Great Finisher" is about staying motivated from a project's beginning to its end. Research has uncovered the reason why this can be so difficult - and a simple strategy to keep your motivation high.

University of Chicago psychologists Minjung Koo and Ayelet Fishbach examined how people pursuing goals were affected by focusing on either how far they had already come (to-date thinking) or what was left to be accomplished (to-go thinking). People routinely use both kinds of thinking to motivate themselves. A marathon runner may choose to think about the miles already traveled. A dieter who wants to lose 30 pounds may try to fight temptation by reminding themselves of the 10 pounds left to go.

Intuitively, both approaches have their appeal. But too much to-date thinking, focusing on what you've accomplished so far, can undermine your motivation to finish.

Koo and Fishbach's research consistently shows that when we are pursuing a goal, and ponder how far we've already come, we feel a premature sense of accomplishment - and begin to slack off.

Great Finishers force themselves to stay focused on the goal, and never congratulate themselves on a job half-done. Great managers create Great Finishers by reminding their employees to keep their eyes on the prize, and are careful to avoid giving effusive praise or rewards for hitting milestones "along the way." Encouragement is important, but to keep your team motivated, save the accolades for a job well — and completely — done.