Ebb and Flow: The Pattern of Starting and Abandoning Plans and Projects

In my wanderings through life, I have noticed that a lot of people are very good at "starting great projects" and then abandon them very quickly.

What brought this to mind was trying to visit a few favorite blogs this morning, and a couple of Facebook pages I had previously been happy to discover. Several of them were clearly "not active" anymore.

The common thread seems to be that someone had a great idea, started doing whatever it was they had in mind with great enthusiasm... and then abandoned the project because "it wasn't a HUGE success" in a matter of a few weeks or months. 

Success Usually Requires Patience

With the exception of a few people who "got lucky" because they had some truly novel idea that went viral on introduction, my experience has been that very few projects 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 hit that moment of "critical mass" and would have become very successful.

This pattern of start-abandon-start-abandon seems to have become especially true now in "The Age of the Internet" where 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."

I have been watching it happen a little bit here on Steemit, with some of the old timers starting to freak out a little because there isn't more "happening" here... after not even a year.

I guess we live in the Age Of Instant Gratification... but how realistic is that, really?

It's not a New Story...

Even back in the pre-Internet days, I remember starting my own businesses... and often my business partners were ready to back out because they weren't making enough money to drive a new Mercedes after a less than a year. 

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

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

Sometimes things can take a long time. Take a company like twitter. This is a huge company with a household name, founded in 2006, 300+ MILLION users... and they are still trying to figure out how to actually make money. Fortunately, enough people decided to not just abandon ship because "it wasn't working" at the end of year one.

Success is "Built," I doesn't just happen spontaneously

I believe that pretty much anyone can "build success" with a solid 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. But what is sure-- 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.

But if you're willing to deal with the time and effort factor, you'll also know that the "house" you built stands on a solid foundation, and it not just a "house of cards" built on nothing but air.

So what do YOU think? When you start things, do you have patience with them? Do you have expectations that success should be quick and easy? Are there things you have "left behind" that you later realized might have done well, if only you'd had more patience? Do you think I am being "too cynical" concerning what it takes to succeed? Do you think some of our worried fellow Steemians are just being too impatient? Leave a comment-- start the discussion!

(As per usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)