You’ve clicked through a website, selected products, filled your online shopping cart. All that remains is to enter your card info and select shipping details. But you don’t. You have a second thought, slide the mouse over “Cancel”, and move on. Online merchants refer to this as the “abandoned cart”. Businesses spend hours and resources and hire consultants and experts to help them alleviate this in the sales process. Most believe this has something to do with the right message at the right time. So, you’ll be hounded with emails, and discounts, and offers, and reminders. “Are you sure you don’t want that cashmere Taylor Swift throw pillow? What if you got 20% off? Oh, and free shipping? Just a reminder, it’s still in your shopping cart.”
Our lives and work are filled with abandoned carts. We all have projects, tasks, goals, that we put energy to. Things we started on, went all the way to that crucial step, and then hit “Cancel” and moved on to something else. Is it essentially wise to leave things unfinished? Is there a negative to life at home and work becoming a series of abandoned carts, a long list of things we didn’t complete? The New Testament tells us that it is a sign of spiritual maturity to finish what we start: “So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have” (2 Corinthians 8:11). How, then, do we keep from abandoning all of those carts along the way?
Never make a casual start. In order to abandon something, you had to have begun it. For many the issue is the casual start. We don’t consider something fully from the outset. As we go it takes more time, more money, more energy, than we were really willing to give it. Given the mountain ahead, we just quit. Kids have a lot of casual starts, because they’re still searching from what really interests them. My son has tried saxophone, violin, soccer, taekwondo and gymnastics. But he found his love—baseball. Now we have a benchmark when he wants to start something new. “If you had to choose between this and baseball, which would it be?” Baseball wins out, every time.
This works equally well for adults. Measure starting something against that which you are deeply committed to. Will this new thing affect your marriage, your family, your faith? It’s more likely you’ll finish something if it’s closely aligned to something else you’re already deeply committed to. In those cases, even if the commitment is difficult, you’re more likely to finish it. Don’t say yes casually. Be the kind of person that always says, “Let me think about it,” and give yourself time to consider. This will keep your home from being littered with unused saxophones, violins, soccer balls and taekwondo uniforms.
Attach a “yes” to your character. When you abandon an online shopping cart, there’s no consequence. Nobody will knock on your front door that evening demanding you complete the sale. Online, about 70% of all shopping carts are abandoned.[1] Nobody checks to see if you’ve got a shopping cart reputation before you go back to Amazon the next day. When you quit in real life, though, there can indeed be consequences—relationships and trust might be broken, something important falls through the cracks, someone who was depending on you gets ghosted. Jesus Himself said, “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no” (Matthew 5:37). Translation: Don’t abandon shopping carts in real life.
When you say yes, make it a matter of character. Do others believe on you when you tell them, “Yes, I’ll do it?” Being dependable—trustworthy and reliable—is a powerful character trait. People gravitate toward those they can depend on. But it takes discernment to be rock-solid in your “yes”. Every yes for the Christ follower is more than a simple commitment—it is a test of character.
Don’t become a discount person. When you quit your shopping cart, companies immediately attempt to woo you back with offers and discounts. When it comes to abandoning online shopping carts, 39% said the reason was because the extra costs (tax, shipping, fees) got tacked on before they confirmed. And that’s true as well in real life—we’ll often fail to count the total cost of something in our time, resources, relationships, and so we just bail out. Not only take time to think about your answers, but when you are thinking, consider the cost in time and energy, and add some margin beyond what you think it will take. Are you willing to pay the full price by carrying through to completion?
Quitting affects another area of your life and work, beyond resources and character—and that is your reputation. Stop once due to a crisis and all is forgiven. But keep abandoning things in the middle, and you’ll quickly find yourself bearing a marker as one who quits. Here’s the true, behind the scenes effect of abandoning cart after cart after cart—about 80% of those who quit something later wish they hadn’t. It builds not only your character, but your reputation with others to be known as a person who sees their commitments through.
The next time you’re challenged with a commitment to something or someone, think through the decision first, and be willing to say a kind and polite “no” if you can’t see it through. Then, when you do say yes, avoid the temptation to abandon when the situation becomes difficult or cumbersome. “Let your yes be yes” and rise to the occasion, so that your character and reputation will be one of dependability and trustworthiness.
[1] https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/effects-of-shopping-cart-abandonment
You’ve clicked through a website, selected products, filled your online shopping cart. All that remains is to enter your card info and select shipping details. But you don’t.