Have I mentioned lately that you should visit Michael Kwan’s blog, Beyond the Rhetoric? Aside from the NFL posts, he does post some interesting and informative stuff, so be sure to check it out.

Neverfinishitis.

It’s something I keep trying to avoid. That and quitting too soon. Both those are things I keep trying to avoid.

But, the former seems to happen anyway.

Here’s the dilemma that many people are faced with. If you work steadily at something, it could be 6 months or even a year or more before you’ll see any results. You could end up making a good income or even striking it rich, if you just keep at it.

But, here’s the rub. By that same token, you could spend 6 months to a year or more working on something that will turn into nothing or, worse, become a complete disaster. And, in that case, you’ll end up feeling you completely wasted your time and should have been doing something else.

That is the situation that many people hope to avoid. I think that is why you see a lot of people give up too soon on things. That’s why, for example, you’ll see bloggers quit blogging after a couple months. If they don’t see immediate results, they move on.

Few things in life are going to have immediate results. Imagine if farmers gave up on their crops if they didn’t have a field full of stuff to harvest after a couple weeks.

The farmer may have the advantage though. Even if he doesn’t have crops ready for harvest in a couple weeks, he is at least able to see progress being made. He can see the plants growing. He’ll be able to tell if they are healthy and doing well, and he can make certain estimations of how well his crop may do. Of course, he can’t plan for weather situations that may damage the crops or other situations beyond his control.

But, that’s an advantage not every business person will have. In some businesses, you may see a trickle of sales start coming in early, so you can be like the farmer and see that your work is beginning to pay off.

On the other hand, there are some things which you have to spend a lot of time on where you will not be able to see any trickling in of sales during the development process. Maybe you’re building a software application, or a membership website, or an eBook, or some other project where you might spend months working on, all in the hopes of a payoff in the end.

And, during that time, you will wonder if you should be doing something else. Will the product sell? Will it have been worthwhile? You can do research ahead of time to gauge interest, but that’s not always a reliable barometer.

So, you can argue all you want about “sticking with it” and having a positive attitude, but neither of those things will pay the bills. You may be forced into situations where you simply cannot stick with it and have to try other things in an effort to get some money to pay the bills.

It’s easy for the successful people to tell you that you should “stick with it” because that’s what they did, but you don’t hear from the unsuccessful people who did “stick with it” and ultimately failed.

The real trick may be in finding the right balance, and that’s what I intend to do.

First, I want to finish my eBook, How to Train Your Mind. I’ve been working on it since around about the fall of 2006, so it’s time to finish the thing up and get it up for sale. Don’t know how well it will sell, but won’t know until it’s done.

At the same time, I want to continue plugging away at my eCommerce site so I can get the redesign finish and get that open to the public and hopefully generating orders!

And I also want to set aside some time to work on one of my story projects. I just have to pick ONE to work on and just work on that one until it’s finished. Just not sure which one to work on!

I think I’ll put extra emphasis on getting the eBook done, just to get that finished. Once it’s done, I won’t have to do much with it. Just put it up for sale, and people will be able to download it right after they pay. So, once that’s done, I shouldn’t have to do much with it at all, aside from some promotion and answering the occasional eMails.

Then, after the eBook is out of the way, I can double-up on getting the eCommerce site done. Once that’s done, all I’ll hopefully need to do is process orders, which should be easier because more of the process will be automated, which will mean less work for me to do!

Maybe I’ll put some sort of progress bar on here or do occasional posts or something so you all can keep me on my toes…

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 12:40 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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