Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

Announcing a plan hands you a portion of the satisfaction of having done it, which quietly lowers the pressure to finish. Recounting past achievements carries a related cost, since it spends the credit and makes you duller company. Work that stands up needs neither advance publicity nor commentary afterwards.

Try keeping the next project quiet until there is something to show for it. Notice the urge to tell somebody, and notice that it fades once the work is properly underway. Let people discover what you did rather than being informed of it.