5 Excuses You’re Telling Yourself to Start Over Again and Again

Time to get rid of Shiny Object Syndrome and some more updates.

Photo by Jonas Stolle on Unsplash

If you’re like me, you’ve been feeling stuck in a loop of starting things, seeing mild to no results, abandoning them, and returning to the top of this vicious cycle.

You might start a blog or a YouTube channel and not see any results. Something in your life pressures you to deliver fast results, so you ditch the thing and move on to something new. The thing we don’t realize when we’re experiencing this loop is there are no fast results.

Everyone you’ve ever seen succeed “quickly” tried other things that didn’t work before and started being consistent with what they’re doing now.

In this post, I’ll go over 5 excuses we’re using to convince ourselves to abandon what we’re doing and start something new. Here they are:

1. It’s not working.

2. I’m not getting traffic.

3. I’m not passionate anymore.

4. I don’t have time.

5. This will be better.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Excuse #1: It’s not working

This is the most common excuse. You’re just not vibing with what you’re doing. The initial excitement of starting something new has passed, leaving you with a lot of work.

This excuse should not be justified because everybody feels like this when starting something new. Even if you have a fantastic idea, you won’t always feel excited to work on it. Life happens.

Excuse #2: I’m not getting traffic

This is such a problem for anyone starting something new. The days when starting a new website and immediately getting traffic from Google or other search engines are long gone.

Traffic does not magically happen. You need to work to make your website visible. Some strategic methods include SEO Optimization, Social Media shares, publishing on discoverability-supported platforms like Substack and Medium, etc.

If you’re hoping for SEO juice, you must realize that doesn’t happen overnight. Traffic sometimes trickles a few months after you start your thing.

Don’t let this excuse bring you down. Focus on what you get control and be patient.

Excuse #3: I’m not passionate anymore

You might want to start over because you’re not feeling that spark anymore. And not feeling the spark in what we do is a significant turn-off in any creative outlet.

However, you need to differentiate between not feeling the spark because you’re not getting results or not feeling the spark because you genuinely don’t enjoy what you’re doing.

If it’s the latter, you should probably consider starting over as grinding away at something that truly doesn’t bring you any joy, regardless of any external validation, is a tormenting reality.

However, if it’s the former, I’m sad to say you should reconsider starting over and prioritizing focusing on your results instead of external validation.

Excuse #4: I don’t have time

As of writing these words, tonight is Yom Kippur - the holiest of days in Judaism. We fast for 25 hours and completely disconnect from technology to reflect on this day of judgment. There are less than 4 hours until I need to go to the service in the synagogue that begins the entire day of prayers.

And I still found the time to publish this to you. How? Because I believe in carving smaller chunks of time. Many creators think you must schedule an hour or more on your calendar to make this work. And it does work for some people. But not for me.

If I am given an hour of work without realizing what I want to do in that hour, I will waste it. That's why I prefer to work for even 10 minutes, knowing there’s something specific I want to accomplish.

So this entire newsletter was built over a few days of picking little slices of time to work on it between other things that happen in my life, like the Jewish holiday season and my day job.

When some of us don’t have time, we decide to shut down what we’ve been doing and start over when we experience a slightly less stressful season. Well, guess what? You can’t predict that. What if the stress is only going to go up from here? And that’s precisely what will happen when life pours more and more responsibilities on you, and you keep starting over the one thing that could free up more of your time.

You have time. You need to focus on less of it to accomplish things.

Excuse #5: This will be better

The final reason you start over again and again is because you think the next thing you’re going to begin will be better than what you have now.

This is objectively wrong. In your current thing, you have maybe a handful of content pieces. You already set up a domain or accounts or whatever you needed to set up to begin this thing. Now you’ll need to do this all over again for the new thing you’re starting. How is that any better?

This is why shiny object syndrome can damage your creative journey. Starting a blog? You can’t expect to see results after 5 posts. Commit to putting out 100 posts before you decide to abandon the project. And let me tell you, when you reach 100 posts, you won’t abandon this thing. The tipping point between starting a new project and investing more energy into your current one will have passed by 100 posts. You will see some measure of results by then.

If you want to quit because you think you have something better in your mind than what you already created - think again. Give it some time or goal commitment and see what happens.

Some Other Updates!

I hope you enjoyed reading this post so far! This is here at the end if you truly care about me and some updates I have to share.

First of all, I’m making this and my personal YouTube channel my home base on the internet. Substack has grown enough to allow me to create something that truly feels personalized to my readers.

This means that Nerdy Modern Blog is going away, but all posts on it will be imported to this publication in the coming weeks.

It also means you’ll see videos on my YouTube channel that mention posts on this substack. The power of repurposing.

Substack is now also powered with a discoverability algorithm. I’m not counting on it, but if you found me through the substack discover feature, let me know in the comments below!

If you’re worried you’ll get a ton of emails, don’t fret, my friend! I will send a weekly newsletter, and in that newsletter, I will include the links to everything I published that week at the bottom.

If you’re interested, I’m also starting a paid subscription here which will help support my writing. I don’t know what it will include, but I intend to make some content specifically for paying members. And it will be something extra, maybe the drafts of my fantasy book, or some content creation educational material, or even coding material. We’ll see how it goes.

Thank you for being here! I’ll catch you in the next one, where I will set expectations about the newsletter and what to expect going forward.