Five years ago I, and Phil, my only employee at the time, decided to set up a recording studio in unused space in our office building. I clearly remember saying, “It will probably never make any money. Who pays for recording studios any more? But it will be fun and we’re excited about it so I guess we’ll go ahead.” I had zero foresight to the spinoff business, ATS Acoustics, that came out of the recording studio project, and is now a multi-million dollar company. The seed grew into something much bigger. It was impossible to predict or measure the size of the tree at the seed stage.

Five weeks ago I was working on my Time Audit iPhone app, and I almost dropped the project. I said “It will probably never make enough money to pay for itself. App development is super-competitive. But it’s cool technology and I want to learn it, so I guess I’ll finish it.” And I did. Last week a government-funded research group came to me with interest in contracting a custom version of Time Audit that will be used in transportation safety research. Their research will probably end up saving lives, and Time Audit might have a little role in that. Time Audit is not a tree yet, it’s just a seedling, but it’s already clear that I had no ability to predict, let alone measure, the future potential at the seed stage.

Despite this difficulty in measuring, rational planning depends on estimates of the future potential of seeds. We have to decide which seeds to spend time and money nurturing, and which seeds to ignore. I don’t think this challenge can be reduced to simple answers. Here are two observations:

1) It’s not necessary to evaluate the future value of each seed accurately. It’s only necessary to correctly evaluate the relative potential of each seed you have to work with. Invest resources in the seed(s) you estimate have the most potential compared to the others.

2) In both of these cases, I felt resistance in me saying “I really should not do this project just because I’m energized about it.” I felt it was a little irresponsible to do an iffy project just for fun, but I did the project anyway. I couldn’t have been more wrong in thinking it was irresponsible to have fun starting that recording studio. So pay attention to your energy and interest level, even if the numbers are foggy at the seed stage.