There is a stubborn, quiet fact about people born in the 1960s and 1970s that most popular think pieces get wrong. They are not simply nostalgic or old fashioned. They finish things. Projects. Jobs. Commitments. Not always perfectly and not always for the right reasons but more often than not they close chapters other generations leave ajar. This piece is part observation part provocation. I want to argue that this finishing impulse is real and rooted in social conditions habit formation and a particular kind of learned patience.
What finishing looks like in the flesh
Walk into a community allotment on a Saturday morning in a mid sized British town and you will see it. A woman in her late fifties coaxing a tired pear tree back to life. A man in his early sixties who still fixes the same leaking tap because he remembers his father swearing it could be mended. These scenes are not quaint. They are repeated acts of closure. They are people noticing something unfinished and choosing to make it finished rather than to shop for a new version or outsource the discomfort to someone else.
Not every completion is heroic
Sometimes the finishing is petty. Someone clears out a garage and throws away a box containing decades of family receipts and a cursed lamp. Sometimes finishing is stubbornness masquerading as virtue. I am not celebrating every act of completion. I am interested in the pattern that links these acts to the formative years of people born in the 60s and 70s.
How history shaped a finishing muscle
People born in the 60s and 70s grew up without constant software updates without disposable everything and without the expectation that a new app will solve a household problem. They encountered scarcity not as a talking point but as a structural condition. A washing machine had to be repaired because buying a new one was a household argument. That economy taught a mental economy too. Resources had to be stewarded projects could not be abandoned mid course because replacement was expensive and social support networks expected follow through.
Institutional rehearsal
Schools workplaces and local institutions of that era also rehearsed finishing. Long term apprenticeships were common. Trades and steady employment were part of a social contract. A task completed was evidence of character and reliability. This created a reputational currency that still matters in small towns and among tight networks. Reputation is not glamorous but it compels completion.
Psychology not nostalgia
There is a psychological architecture here. The repeated necessity to finish builds habits that cascade. Habits feed self perception. Self perception feeds choices. Over a lifetime those loops harden into an approach where interruption is costly not only materially but emotionally. People who grew up in that rhythm feel an internal friction when leaving things half done. The friction becomes fuel.
Grit is passion and perseverance for very long term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future day in day out. Grit is living life like it is a marathon not a sprint.
— Angela Duckworth Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor University of Pennsylvania.
Duckworth is usually quoted about individuals but her framing helps explain generational habit too. There are collective incentives that nurture grit like long term employment norms and community expectations.
Modern contrasts make the pattern visible
Look at how contemporary life offers escapes. If a subscription fails you replace it. If a hobby bores you there are influencers promising a fresh start. The architecture of the internet normalises iteration. This is liberating and corrosive at once. It reduces the psychic cost of not finishing. It also elevates experimentation which younger cohorts rightly value. Yet the consequence is fewer cultural rehearsals for completion.
Not superior just different
Make no mistake. I am not arguing moral superiority. People born in the 60s and 70s are not some moral aristocracy. They made messy mistakes. They held grudges. They finished the wrong projects as often as the right ones. My point is that finishing is a cultural skill and it matters in ways we undervalue, especially when modern institutions ask for endurance over novelty.
Practical payoff and hidden costs
When someone finishes what they start the payoff is concrete. Projects reach usable ends. Small businesses survive. Families have more functional homes. But there are hidden costs. Completion can entrench outdated methods. Reluctance to abandon a failing plan is not the same as strategic perseverance. I have met people who completed projects that should have been stopped earlier and paid dearly for the aesthetic of finishing.
Where I disagree with the comfortable narratives
Popular narratives often flatten generational truth. We hear that millennials and Gen Z are flighty while boomers persist. That is lazy. Persistence is context dependent and intersectional. Economic security access to capital health and caregiving pressure all shape whether a person can afford to finish something. People born in the 60s and 70s were sometimes given the structural privilege to maintain commitments. That privilege matters and complicates the image of purely moral grit.
Original insight most writers skip
Here is an angle you will not see in listicles. Finishing is also a conversational skill. The people I know who finish have polished what I call closure language. They know how to tell a story to others that makes ending feel proportional and dignified. They can archive a project in a sentence or two and invite others to accept the end. That rhetorical economy makes termination social and tidy. Younger people are learning this slowly because the culture around digital projects often lacks rituals for graceful closure.
That matters beyond cottages and gardens. In workplaces the capacity to close a project and communicate the end elegantly preserves relationships and keeps social capital intact. The ritual of reporting the end of a project is underrated.
What this suggests for younger people and institutions
If you are younger and impatient do not mimic the worst excesses of older cohorts. Do learn their closure craft. Practice the small acts of finishing. Create micro rituals that mark completion. Institutions should not weaponise finishing as a stick. Instead they should create incentives for deliberate completion while acknowledging when ending a project early is wise.
A final, open ended thought
There is no single reason people born in the 60s and 70s finish more frequently. It is a knot of economic conditions cultural rehearsals habit formation and rhetorical economy. I will not pretend this fully explains everything. Human behaviour resists tidy explanations. But if you notice that trait in someone older do not dismiss it as nostalgia. It is, at least sometimes, a practical competence we should learn from not denigrate.
Summary table
| Trait | Why it developed | Practical effect |
|---|---|---|
| Resource stewardship | Scarcity of replacements and economy of repair | Higher rates of project completion and maintenance |
| Institutional rehearsal | Longer apprenticeships and steady employment norms | Stronger reputational incentives to close tasks |
| Closure language | Social rituals for ending projects | Cleaner transitions and preserved relationships |
| Hidden costs | Reluctance to abandon failing plans | Completed projects that should have been stopped earlier |
FAQ
Why are you generalising about whole generations?
I am not offering a caricature. Generational analysis is shorthand for shared contexts. The aim here is to spot patterns not to erase individual differences. People within any generation vary wildly. Yet shared experiences like the economic realities of childhood schools that emphasised long apprenticeships and household norms around repair create tendencies worth naming.
Does finishing always equal success?
No finishing is a neutral tool. It can be applied to the right or wrong thing. Completing a project that is harmful or obsolete is not a virtue. The skill we should prize is calibrated completion the ability to judge when to persist and when to stop. That discernment requires both courage and reflective practice.
Can younger generations learn to finish more often?
Yes they can. Practices matter. Create small commitments that require completion. Build reporting rituals. Practice closure language. Normalize ending things publicly in ways that conserve social capital. These are learnable habits not personality traits etched in stone.
Is this argument just a defence of old ways?
Not at all. I am critical of the parts of finishing culture that resist necessary change. My position mixes admiration for certain crafts with a refusal to romanticise every act of persistence. The past has lessons not instructions. We should borrow what serves and discard what holds us back.
Where does culture fit into this pattern?
Culture is the stage where habits are rehearsed. Small town networks workplaces and even hobby communities transmit expectations about completion. These social frames often mattered more than individual temperament. Culture supplies scripts for what closure looks like and who gets credit for it.
How should organisations use this insight?
Organisations should reward responsible completion not mere endurance. They should teach closure rituals and allow the termination of failing projects without social punishment. Doing so harnesses the practical benefits of finishing while avoiding the trap of valuing completion over outcomes.
There is probably a thousand subtler variations on this theme. I continue to learn from people who inherit finishing as a craft. Their lives are messy instructive and often underappreciated. That is why I keep paying attention.
