Every new idea you have doesn’t have to be enacted. Every idea you act on doesn’t have to succeed.
In fact, sticking with something that’s NOT working is one of the least productive uses of resources on Earth. We call this “sunk costs”; when we double down on a previously made decision that is proving unsuccessful despite reasonable efforts. The best antidote to sunk costs? Cut your losses, move on, and spend your time and resources pursuing potentially successful new efforts. The best business owners and leaders know this.
We should all try more new things. We should all be willing to rack up more failures. Think about Edison’s famous quip about having not failed but found 10,000 ways that didn’t work. The most successful people try thousands of new ideas, knowing that most will fail.
But the ultra-successful, the 1% or less? They intentionally kill off good, even exceptionally successful ideas. They kill off things they love, things that are “fun”, because they understand not only sunk costs, but also opportunity costs, where saying yes to something is saying no to everything else. They double or even triple down on the things that can bring the exponentially greatest returns, and they do that with endless consistency.
Try something new. Assume it will fail. Abandon it when it does. Repeat until you find the thing worth endless consistent investment.
Not everything has to be fun or successful.
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