Monday Mumbles: Looking at the Pattern of Starting and Abandoning Projects

In my wanderings through life, I have noticed that a lot of people are very good at "starting great projects" and then go on to abandon them very quickly... often for no particular tangible reason.

What brought this to mind was trying to visit a few favorite blogs this morning, along with a couple of Facebook pages I had been happy to discover, a couple of years back. Sadly, several of them were clearly "not active" anymore.

The common thread seemed to be that someone had a great idea, started doing whatever it was they had in mind with great fervor and enthusiasm... and then abandoned the project for some reason, whether it was just growing bored or becoming unhappy because "it wasn't a HUGE success" in a matter of a few weeks or months.

This seems to happen a lot, even here on Hive.

With the exception of a few people who got lucky because they had some truly novel idea that went viral, my experience has been that very FEW projects — in the real world — succeed except with lots of dedication, hard work and a "long term horizon" to work towards. The second part of my experience suggests that a large number of people have "successful ideas" but end up failing because they abandon their ideas several months or even years before they could have become very successful.

This seems to have become especially true here in "The Age of the Internet" where surprisingly many normally sane people have developed this unhealthy expectation that they are going to become overnight successes. In my estimation, that's not "creating success," that's "winning the lottery."

Even back in the pre-Internet days, I remember starting my own business... and my business partners were ready to back out and head for the hills because they weren't making enough money to live the "big life" after a less than a couple of years.

And, in fact, they ended up almost abandoning their shares of the business... either selling it back to me, or simply walking away... long before the business actually became quite successful... four years after it had been started.

My rules of business advice are rather cynical, I suppose, but they are based on reality, not "wishes and dreams."

Which is not to say that the world doesn't need dreamers and visionaries!

I believe that pretty much anyone can "build success" with an idea, whether it's a web site, a brick-and-mortar business, a product they make or even just building a fan page on Facebook or a blog on Hive. But what is almost guaranteed — except for maybe 1% of the time — is that it will take MORE work, and MORE time, and cost MORE money than you expect, to get there.

It takes patience and perseverance... and — as some of Hive's "heavy hitters" so often say — "You have to show up every day." And that's regardless of whether or not you feel like it.

Of course, I am no exception to the "start and run" approach... this has happened in my life, as well. Most often it has been because I started something on the understanding that it was going to be free, and then I discovered that there actually was a bunch of expense involved with going beyond the very basics.

A few times I also discovered (mostly in a writing context) that there simply wasn't enough material to create something on any scale... and so, I gave up.

Regardless, I think it's important to understand why we do what we do... particularly why we turn our backs on things, soon after they get started.

Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? Are you a project STARTER, or a project FINISHER, or both? What inspires you to stick with something, rather than walk away? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 20221004 00:12 PDT
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