Successive Approximation Approach to Start-Up Motivation

Our office doesn't have a sink, so there's this camping like feel to being here. I walk down the hall to the washroom where I fill up a campsite plastic water jug/dispenser a couple of times a week to keep the kettle filled up. As my clean cups get used up by visitors I similarly bring them down for a wash, though a rinse and a wipe keep them pretty much clean anyway. Discarded paper town in my garbage cans makes for a good dumping area for small amounts of liquid, and its evapouration probably adds a bit to the dry office environment.

How much longer will I be here, sharing with a massage therapist? Probably a couple of months total. The disruptiveness of karatechopping and bodies flying next door is tempered by the all inclusive rent and no lease. It's a hard balance to strike elsewhere. I'll keep my eyes open, but I suspect any move will be one of three, okay four situations. A) I get some funding, B) I give up C) The RMT's does well and want to get a third working D) I go off the deep end and need to get away from the ju jitsu-a-thon next door and find another good situation.

I seem to do this often in my life when thinking about change - enumerate the likely outcomes and add probabilities to each. Strangely, I've never gone back to find old estimates and scored my success. So who knows if I'm good at it. Anyway, right now I'd say probabilities are: A-20%, B-70%, C-20% D-15%.

That's the first pass, but that's the value in this process. Yes, you mathematical genius, it doesn't add up to 100%. The result is that we make another pass, and in that we see which numbers we feel most confident in. Aha, we've learned something then, haven't we. I think the C and D numbers are pretty good. The A number I'm really not too sure about. The B number seems likely, but maybe too pessimistic. So I revise it based on confidence levels to be:

A-15%, B-55%, C-15% D-10% which works out short, but my sense is then that C,D are getting better, but I'm could probably move my last 5% into A or B. So my final guess is then:

A-20%, B-55%, C-15% and D-10% And I feel pretty good about that. It makes me realize that in spite of the long haul, I still retain a fair bit of confidence about getting some funding. Whether it's well founded or not is beside the point. At this point, I'm mostly concerned about the fuel left in A to avoid B.

Researchinator gains a bit of energy towards finishing the day.