The last ten per cent

The final stretch of anything is disproportionately unpleasant. The interesting problems are solved, what remains is tidying, checking, formatting and small unglamorous corrections — and the work no longer teaches you anything, so the reward that carried the middle has gone.

Knowing that is most of the fix. The flatness at ninety per cent is a predictable feature of the shape of work, not a signal that the project is bad or that you have lost interest in it. People who finish things are not people who never feel it. They are people who expected it.