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A long experience of blogging made me very conscious of my writing routine. When you are expected to deliver something (in this case, writing) at a consistent pace and at a constant level of quality, you have to. Just like a professional programmer builds his own libraries and frameworks, in time, I built my own writing setup, putting together a scaffold for idea capturing, notes, drafts, challenges, scheduling and so on.

This setup is especially useful when you don't have the energy and / or the inspiration to come up with something both new and solid.

Today, being a Sunday, is a perfect example for that situation.

So, knowing that it will be a lazy, slowly unfolding day, I just gave up completely the idea of writing something on the spot and turned to that setup, starting to browse my notes and ideas.

And one of these notes stood up: "money, the blessing and the curse of steemit". I looked closer and I saw one more line: "delayed gratification".

Hmm, what was on my mind? Let's see...

The Blessing

As a platform, Steemit manages to shorten the path between the effort and the reward dramatically. All it takes to get paid is roughly 24 hours (if you made any money on your posts, that is). That's mind boggling. I know the industry for years and I know what I'm talking about, it's mind boggling. It's so fast that many seasoned bloggers hearing abut this are instantly pulling the "scam/ponzi" card without even waiting for explanations. For them, it's simply impossible to generate income by writing, in such a rapid and seamless way. And I have to accept that these people are the majority today.

From this point of view, money (or, to put it more clearly, the speed with which you reach the money) is a real blessing. From any angle you look at it, Steemit is revolutionary. And I'm not saying this in a philanthropist, "oh-steemit-you-save-my-life" way, although I'm very well aware that this happened already and it may well happen again. I'm saying this from the perspective of an entrepreneur, which observes business processes and understands how and why value is generated. There is something truly revolutionary at this platform.

Alas, as we know, every revolution comes at a price.

The Curse

In a famous study, with various degrees of virality over the last few years, researches from Stanford University showed the link between instant gratification and success. The test is actually quite old, being ran first time in the sixties, but various reruns have been available on the Internet lately. For the impatient, here's one of them:

What the test shows is an inverse correlation between instant gratification and success. In other words, the more you can wait to indulge in your reward, the more successful you'll be. Generally speaking, instant gratification makes you less prepared to succeed.

Mix this with Steemit now, please. The speed at which STEEM, SBD and Steem Power flows into your account is, like I said, mind boggling. How long will you resist? How long until you say: "oh, gosh, I really have to eat that marshmallow now, because, screw it, I have no idea when the next one will come?".

I think the way we, as stakeholders, are managing this temptation is crucial for Steemit success as a platform. If we, as stakeholders, no matter if we're mega-whales or minnows, are starting to eat the marshmallow now, not only we will renounce the future one, but we will destroy the sources of all marshmallows entirely.

And the next marshmallow, in the case of Steemit, could actually mean not only one marshmallow, but a basket full of marshmallows.

Oh, what am I talking about: a truck full of marshmallows.

Welcome to samsara: where money is both good and bad. A blessing and a curse.

image source - Pixabay

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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You can also vote for me as a Steemit witness here:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses