Reference reading
Inconstancy
Giving each fresh beginning a claim that the unfinished commitment soon loses.
Habitually abandoning considered purposes or commitments without an adequate reason.
Imagine this: A row of chairs has acquired several different beginnings and no finished coat of paint.
How the pattern works
The chairs show plenty of initiative and very little continuation. Inconstancy repeatedly withdraws allegiance from a considered purpose without a sufficient reason, often when the novelty fades and the less conspicuous work begins. The next beginning receives the enthusiasm the existing undertaking still needs.
A change of direction can be responsible. New evidence may show that the original purpose was mistaken, a dependency may fail or a more important need may emerge. The distinction is whether the reason for change can bear examination. A fresh preference is not made into a considered decision merely by announcing it energetically.
What it costs the work
Other people can be left organizing around commitments that no longer command their maker’s attention. Materials, unfinished explanations and half-built arrangements accumulate. The person changing course may experience a succession of promising starts while colleagues experience the work of closing each one.
A distinction worth keeping
Impatience resists necessary duration; Inconstancy abandons or shifts the commitment itself. Dishonesty may give a promise never sincerely intended, whereas an inconstant person can mean each assurance when making it. Rigidity creates the opposite problem of preserving a method or judgment after relevant reasons call for change.
What a useful response can change
A commitment can include a purpose and a review point, so that persistence and reconsideration both have a place. Neither every passing frustration nor every new idea needs an immediate change of course.
A proposed switch can account for what remains owed: the unfinished work, the people who relied on the plan and the resources already committed. These claims do not always forbid a change, but they belong in the decision.
When a task is stopped, closing it deliberately can preserve what was learned and release other people from an obsolete expectation. Quietly losing interest leaves the commitment active in somebody else’s plan.
Questions for reflection
- What reason for this change would remain persuasive after the newness wears off?
- Who still thinks the previous commitment is in force?
Other perspectives
But those jurists who say that a group is governed by its purpose and leave the matter there are making a thing-in-itself of the purpose; we are governed by the purpose, yes, but we are all the time evolving the purpose.
Mary Parker Follett · The New State · Read the source
Follett treats a group’s purpose as something that continues to develop. Constancy therefore cannot mean freezing the original plan after experience has supplied a sound reason to revise it.
Hence arises that eminent esteem with which all men naturally regard a steady perseverance in the practice of frugality, industry, and application, though directed to no other purpose than the acquisition of fortune.
Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source
Smith describes the esteem attached to sustained application, even in acquiring a fortune. Here the relevant contrast is the continuity of effort; accumulation alone does not settle whether the purpose is worthwhile.