The No Excuses Project: ‘I’ll lose interest before it’s profitable’
October 28, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under No Excuses Project
This excuse is almost like having a fear of losing momentum. While not everything relates to profit, the underlying excuse is ‘it won’t be worth it’ so why start? There are two distinct categories to this, perhaps for you as well:
1) It’s really my brain saying you ‘should’ do this, want to do this, will be better for doing this when in fact my heart doesn’t want to do it at all. In which case it isn’t so much an excuse as a message saying ‘stop! Don’t go there!’ which needs to be listened to.
2) I’m unclear what the outcome will look like and so it feels like stepping off a cliff without seeing what lies beneath. I’m not sure what ‘it’ is so how can I possibly judge the value of the effort involved? I’m trying to change my habit of thinking and rely more on the process and less on the goal. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if a project gets finished or if a new skill ever gets applied. Sometimes, the benefit is in the learning phase or even just investigating. Have you ever researched on the web and found some fascinating site that is completely unrelated but which you never would have found otherwise? Was it worth it?
Distinguishing between the two categories is difficult but generally speaking a quick intuition check will give a clear answer. And as far as I know there’s no prize at the end for living life as efficiently as possible.
Next week: ‘I’m not strong enough’
