The projector hummed, a low, irritating bass note vibrating through the cheap laminate table. The coffee was thin, institutional, and smelled exactly like the coffee we drank last year when we launched-and subsequently buried-Project Apex. Today, we call it Project Ascend.

I was staring at Slide 4. The stock photo of the diverse team high-fiving was identical. I remember arguing about that specific photo last fall; someone mentioned the color palette clashed with the brand guide, and we spent 14 minutes debating it. Fourteen minutes wasted on a visual artifact for a project that was scheduled, deep down, to fail within four months. We knew it then, and we know it now. Yet here we sit, 234 people packed into the auditorium, pretending that this time, the PowerPoint fonts-now subtly rounded-will somehow defy the physics of corporate attention span.

This isn’t cynicism; it’s geometry. We are trapped in an organizational loop, an infinite sequence of kickoffs and cancellations. The core frustration isn’t the work itself-the work is often brilliant, sharp, and innovative for its tiny, doomed window of existence. The frustration is the sheer, predictable waste, the building of exquisite sandcastles precisely where the tide is guaranteed to rush in at 3:00 PM on the dot. We are taught, implicitly, that commitment is foolish.

Engineered for Novelty, Not Durability

We don’t lack resources; we lack patience. We lack the institutional ability to be bored. The moment a project plateaus-the moment it requires the tedious, repetitive, necessary labor of optimization and long-term care-it is immediately branded ‘legacy’ and sacrificed on the altar of the ‘next big thing.’ Our systems are engineered not for durability, but for novelty. We celebrate the flash and treat longevity with contempt.

This is why I find myself gravitating toward conversations about permanence. About things designed to withstand the inevitable shifts in market gravity, things built to last beyond the immediate fiscal quarter. It’s a radical thought in an ecosystem defined by obsolescence. If you believe that true value resides in the durable, the reliable, and the intentionally timeless, the counter-movement is vital. It’s about creating artifacts that resist the pressure to be immediately disposable, whether they are physical objects or foundational philosophies. This deliberate resistance to the disposable mindset is exactly what defines organizations like EXCITÀRE STUDIOS, who choose the difficult path of longevity over the easy promise of fleeting novelty.

My friend Echo R., who works as an algorithm auditor-a job that sounds futuristic but is mostly about cleaning up digital dust-calls this the ‘Sunk Cost Ghost Data.’ She spends her life tracking the remnants of projects like Apex/Ascend. She can show you the spreadsheet detailing the $44 million sunk into the last three iterations of the same concept.

The Cost of Abandonment (Internal Audit)

Echo’s job is grimly fascinating because she deals in undeniable metrics. She audited a recent cancellation-a small internal AI tool-and found that the team had written exactly 474 lines of core, unique code before the project was shelved. The cost per line of code? About $9,400… And the kicker? The tool was designed to solve the very problem that Project Ascend is now supposed to address.