Checkout lines, Sierra Games, and how striving for more can bring failure.
You need to change course and direction if you’re going to hit your goals! – Random Guru
While striving towards goals does involve being a bit off course a lot of the time, if you’re changing strategies too frequently to try to level up, it could actually cause failure.
The guy at the grocery store checkout line that wants to jump to another line that seems like it’s moving faster, only to realize his original lane was now going faster and jumps back, realizes he never makes any progress as he keeps hopping lines.
The guy in Office Space driving to work hops in the other lane that’s going faster only to immediately stop due to extra traffic.
Sierra On-Line games co-founder Ken Williams talks about how massively successful they were when they started making computer games and dominated in that. Then jumped ship by trying to make video games for consoles and failed miserably in the early 1980s. Ken says he should have never deviated from his original path, despite the allure of video games being much more favorable. Sometimes chasing after a slice of a billion dollar pie is much harder than getting the entire pie if the pie is only $10M.
As an aside, it’s a common lesson we hear repeatedly that it’s better to be the best in a niche more than to be “a part of a billion dollar industry.”
Be impatient with getting into line. Be impatient with getting your niche carved out. Be patient with staying in your niche and growing, more than jumping to a newer broader niche or a different market altogether.
Sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing. Stay in line, stay in your own niche, and keep grinding out that plan. When to switch vs stick it out is an art, but usually tied to progression. If you’re progressing bit by bit, maybe you should stick with it. If you’re not progressing at all, maybe it’s time to switch.
How many things would have gone better for you in the past, if you just stuck with it all the way through as opposed to jumping into something else seemingly more lucrative or exciting?
