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The Million-Dollar-Question and its consequences

[...]

80% of the people I draw up plans for – plans that would clearly work – don’t act on them.

It’s like everyone fantasizes about… whatever… but once their fantasies start to become reality, they piss their pants and self-sabotage.

[...]

via sebastianmarshall.com

I just read this very poetic and well-written post by Sebastian Marshall about why we don't act on our urges to do what we need to do to be successful. Everyone who has ever thought about being an entrepreneur or "do something cool along the way" should read it. And while you're at it, you should read some more by Mr Marshall, because he writes an awful lot of good things.

The piece resonated with me because I am the same way. You probably know the feeling, thinking about this passion that you have, that crazy thing you always wanted to try. You get that suppressed smile on your face and you can almost not stop talking about "the thing", even though everyone thinks you're crazy.

Perhaps you've even made a plan, how you would make enough time while still working. How you'd make sure that you can pay the rent every month, because you're not crazy enough to do that kind of thing full-time. And it might even be a good plan, with numbers and dates and milestones and possible problems and all the other adult things a plan needs to have to persuade anyone that the thing you're planning is not entirely crazy.

You might even have started to work on your plan, perhaps a prototype, or technology research or market research. You might have the numbers to prove that you can do it and that you'd earn money with it.

You might even have talked to others about the plan, perhaps found collaborators, co-conspirators. You might've had a few appointments, talked with them how great it would be and how easy it would be to implement and just do it. You could have had a few beers on the occasion, celebrated your courage and strengthened it with your future business colleagues.

But then, something else happened instead. The first milestone came and went.
The prototype was never made into a real product, or perhaps it wasn't even finished. Or, you know, something in the family came up, or you really needed some safe money, right now, because your car broke down or something like that. Or maybe the kitchen needs fixing, or one of your friends asked for help with moving. Or, hey, look at that, there's already a new set of pictures on reddit that you could look at all day.

I know how that goes. Because I did.

Let me explain!

Almost six months ago now, I quit one of my jobs. At the time, I had two half-time employments, and when one of them didn't work out as planned, I took the plunge and quit. That wasn't an easy thing to do because I lost quite a lot in the process, but I did all the things I suggested above. I had dreams, and ideas, and plans even. I had talked about it with my girlfriend and my parents, and they were all for trying it. I even talked to my girlfriends father and mother about it, and even they were in favor of trying my hand at being self-employed. And so I did it. Since I only had to work 20 hours a week, which would cover all my living expenses nicely, I even had a lot of time on my hands to be a successful entrepreneur.

And, you know, I even went so far as to create a product, Partycode, which is still live and reachable, and which has, to date, not had a single customer. Because when it came to marketing, telling people about the product, going all-in, so-to-speak, I stopped. And so did all two of my fellows, even though we had had great plans for the product.

But, I wasn't deterred. I still had the time and I still wanted to do it. So I drew up more plans. Forged new alliances, found something really neat that I still believe would have worked, if I just could bring myself to do it. And so this wonderful idea, this great product, has never seen the light of day, except in the fragments of our design documents.

What do I do instead? Well, there was the Steam Summer Sale, which was nice. Oh, and then there were all these parties, and the big family event we held. I might have watched one or two TED talks, and perhaps some OpenYale courses. And, of course, Hacker News and Reddit are always there for me when I don't want to do anything else. Nowadays, it's so easy to distract yourself from this lingering thought that you should actually be working...

But, at least I think I can add something to Mr Marshall's million dollar question, because, for me, I think I know the reason.

The reason is potential. Right now, I'm a potential entrepreneur, a potential genius and millionaire and the ideas I have are potentially wonderful, successful and great, and potentially, everyone loves me for producing such a great thing. Actually starting to work on the ideas rubs that golden glow off and makes them less potential, less potent even, although in the process, they would get real. It would take away the fairy dust and add adult things, like milestones and feature lists and press releases, things that don't fit into the perfect vision of the ideal elegant product. And it would also carry the risk of failure. All of a sudden, you're not a millionaire, instead you're just a programmer who has tried to be more than he thinks he is. You're just a nerd than cannot understand why other people are not as nerdy, why no-one would even want to try out revolution you produced. You're just an idiot with no idea about marketing apart from Google AdWords. You're just a lazy guy, sitting at home all day, thinking about how great he might be one day, without ever trying. You're just, let's face it, a loser who should go back to working for the man, because the man knows better anyway.

It's not that easy to face your dreams' destruction. Perhaps even more so when some of your ideas have already not worked.

But writing all this down, I realize that it's worth it. Sitting on your dreams until you're old and grey, letting time get away from you, that's not the way to go. I don't want to look back at my life with rueful eyes, thinking that I _should_ have tried it. I want to look back, thinking: I did it.

So, I'm going to start following my own advice. In a first, painful step, I deleted all the games on this computer and blocked some websites that might distract me from the things I really want to do.

And I'm going to start posting here, every day. Come back tomorrow and you'll see...

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