At what point do you abandon your dreams?
I just read an article about what it's like to pursue a dream for 30 years... and fail. I was thinking to myself — at what point is it just too much? Seeing as we had just learned about opportunity costs in AP Micro, I thought this would be a great topic of discussion for my first blog post. At what point is the opportunity cost too high?
In this article, Keahi Seymour came up with the idea that would change his life at the age of 12: a boot that enabled humans to have strides similar to that of an ostrich. Fast animals like this"store elastic energy in their Achilles tendons" and use that energy to spring up on each stride.
Over the years, Seymour built many different prototypes and spent his life savings (over $200,000) on making this product a reality.
After almost a decade, he was out of ideas. He had spent so much money and most of his life working on this project, and he didn't want to let it die then. He brought it to the New York Maker Faire where it blew up, which was lucky for him. However, other companies began to make (better) knockoffs and he was once again in the dark.
At the moment, now nearly 30 years after the fact, his apartment is littered with prototypes and he is finally thinking about letting it go. If you were in his shoes, what would you do now? I would personally take the experiences that I have had over the last 30 years and use them to make something else that is a more viable product for today's market. Making the "Bionic Boot" was a bit risky and I didn't think it would be successful when I first heard about it.
In his situation, I would not have risked so much for a product that wasn't catching on. After a year or two of pursuing this, I would have recognized that it may not go anywhere — and that the opportunity cost was too high to pursue it. I'd love to hear other class opinions on this: what would you have done similarly or differently? At what point would you have given up?
In this article, Keahi Seymour came up with the idea that would change his life at the age of 12: a boot that enabled humans to have strides similar to that of an ostrich. Fast animals like this"store elastic energy in their Achilles tendons" and use that energy to spring up on each stride.
Over the years, Seymour built many different prototypes and spent his life savings (over $200,000) on making this product a reality.
After almost a decade, he was out of ideas. He had spent so much money and most of his life working on this project, and he didn't want to let it die then. He brought it to the New York Maker Faire where it blew up, which was lucky for him. However, other companies began to make (better) knockoffs and he was once again in the dark.
At the moment, now nearly 30 years after the fact, his apartment is littered with prototypes and he is finally thinking about letting it go. If you were in his shoes, what would you do now? I would personally take the experiences that I have had over the last 30 years and use them to make something else that is a more viable product for today's market. Making the "Bionic Boot" was a bit risky and I didn't think it would be successful when I first heard about it.
In his situation, I would not have risked so much for a product that wasn't catching on. After a year or two of pursuing this, I would have recognized that it may not go anywhere — and that the opportunity cost was too high to pursue it. I'd love to hear other class opinions on this: what would you have done similarly or differently? At what point would you have given up?
I think in cases like these with pursuing dreams, it is very inspiring when people pursue a long-term dream they have and achieve it but they obviously don't always achieve it. I think a big part of this is that people need to be able to recognize how realistic their goals are, with Seymour, after he'd spent majority of his money on his idea and a good 20 years of his life on it, I can see why he wouldn't want to give up. However, the danger of this thinking is that he can't see that the opportunity cost of continuing his project is bigger than stopping and finding a new one.
ReplyDeleteThis was a really interesting post. I think that Seymour probably could have taken a step back a lot earlier on and recognized that this was not the right path to take. But also, I really think that there are a lot of other factors that could have been driving him as an individual. These factors could be things that we are outsiders could never understand. I think that I personally would pursue my dreams for a long time. Perhaps not as long as Seymore, but definitely more than two years. Two years is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I feel like sticking to something for only two years isn't long enough for someone who has been pursuing a dream so fiercely for so long.
ReplyDeleteThis is a super intriguing post! I think what drove Seymour to pursue his "failed" dream was his passion and pursuit for the whole thing. Although it seemed more like a waste of time to you and me, the journey he endeavored to seek his goal may have worth it in terms of opportunity cost. The happiness of constructing each trial most likely brought him happiness and outweighed the physical costs of the project. Personally, I am not exactly the most optimistic person when faced with failure. I wouldn't have done the same as Seymour. However, I can see where someone with a strong will and passion could pursue a dream like this.
ReplyDeleteSuper interesting post! The idea of to what extent do we pursue our dreams is very applicable to each of us as we all have dreams for our future and while some may be possible, others may be nothing more than dreams. According to one source, happiness may come from the courage it takes to try to achieve ones dream. In other words, just the journey of dreaming may allow one to achieve more creativity and more satisfaction than just living your life without a dream. In addition, we have to think about how we define success. Is success an end product, is it a journey, what does it look like? The article I read talked about how people found success through giving up something to follow their dreams, the benefit of following that dream was greater than the cost (what they gave up in order to follow their dream). So, in Seymour's case, can you really say that he failed in his dream? He may never have been financially successful, but he lead a creative and innovative life.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/shannon-skinner/the-price-of-success_b_1666909.html
I strongly agree that past experience should be heavily utilized in future endeavors. I also think that realizing something won't work out is an important skill to have, and while it is difficult to let dreams go, there is definitely a place when it is no longer worth it to continue pursuing one. At any point in the example you gave, after he realized it might not end up working out, he could have stopped and saved all of the remaining time, money, and effort he continued to put into it afterwards. However due to all he had put in previously, he likely felt that the minimal likelihood of it working out in the end was greater than the cost of continuing to work on his dream.
ReplyDelete