The Power of Quitting: How to Know When It’s Time to Let Go
I’m embarrassed to admit how many unfinished projects I have around my house. In fact, the house itself is an unfinished project. I have a problem walking away from something I’ve put time, effort and/or money into. Yes, I have a problem with Sunk Cost. I hate quitting.
We live in a culture that glorifies perseverance at all costs. Many of us have stayed too long at a toxic job, stayed invested in some stock or idea that never panned out, or kept plodding on in a goal that had outlived its usefulness. We have personal, sometimes irrational reasons for that, but knowing something is irrational rarely matters to us. I hope today I can help you and me quit something. Anything. Because quitting isn’t always failure. In fact, sometimes, quitting is the smartest move a winner can make.
The Difference Between Quitting and Giving Up
On the surface, quitting and giving up may sound synonymous. They’re not; they’re very different. Quitting is a conscious, strategic decision. Giving up is an act of despair or avoidance. It’s the difference between changing direction and collapsing on the trail.
Why Winners Sometimes Quit
If the world and everything in it were static, many of us would never quit – we’d finish everything we ever start. One reality, though, is that the world is not static, and many of the things in it with which we interact change. Some change quickly, before we can react completely. New information often requires a new decision.
Sometimes priorities change, and sometimes we outgrow old ambitions. We ourselves are subject to change without notice, relegating a once-critical objective to the compost of old dreams. As we grow along one path, the interest in a different path may subside.
On the opposite end to Sunk Cost is Opportunity Cost – choosing one option means not choosing other options. It doesn’t always mean saying no to all other options, but your time and attention are finite. It sometimes feels like we can do it all, but we can’t, and sometimes that means having to decide which priorities aren’t priorities anymore.
There’s also the toll that chasing some objectives can take on your mental, physical, and emotional health. We can wear ourselves out putting effort and energy into a situation or activity that isn’t going to bear us any fruit. Even if something may not be particularly bad for us to keep doing, if it isn’t providing a benefit but still takes our energy, it may be time to walk away.
Examples of Famous Quitters
We know that Thomas Edison is famous for finding 10,000 ways that don’t work to produce an incandescent light bulb. Although we celebrate Edison for his relentless pursuit of the light bulb, we often overlook the fact that after that triumph, he devoted over a decade to a massive mining venture—only to walk away when the economics no longer made sense. He took the lessons learned from the venture, though, and applied them to battery technology and cement production.
Sometimes quitting leads not just to a better idea—but to a better network. After Reid Hoffman stepped away from SocialNet (an online dating site that was way ahead of its time), he joined PayPal, where he became part of what’s now known as the “PayPal Mafia”—a group of early executives and founders that included Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, and others. After PayPal’s sale to eBay, they didn’t cling to their titles or rest on success—they each moved on, launching or funding companies like LinkedIn, Tesla, SpaceX, YouTube, Yelp, and Palantir (data analysis and intelligence software).
How to Know if it’s Time to Quit
We’re not all going to start the next Tesla or Yelp, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn to recognize the signals that we should be looking for the exit door of a project, a job, or a relationship. One of those signs is that you’ve lost your love for it. When you started that job, you looked forward to going in every morning and solving all the problems. If it’s getting harder to get out of your car in the parking lot, you can start by figuring out what you’re experiencing.
Ask yourself what called out to you in the first place. Is that thing still there? If not, where did it go? If it’s still there, why has it lost its luster for you? How can you ensure you don’t pivot from one thing that’s not serving you now to another thing that’s not serving you?
Next, ask why you stayed this long. Is it just that sunk cost, or are you feeding your fear or pride? Are you staying in order to meet someone else’s expectations? How is that serving you? Is the current situation still serving your growth? If not, when did it stop, and in what way?
Have you truly hit a dead end in the current situation, or is it merely a rough patch? There can be quite a difference, and you can tell partly by how long you’ve been feeling it, and whether it’s an intermittent feeling or ongoing. Another indicator is whether it’s tied to something else or independent of everything.
What Happens After You Quit
One of the scariest parts of quitting something is the void that’s left in the wake of the quit. But that void provides you with space for better opportunities. You get to reclaim some measure of your energy, clarity, and momentum for other activities. There’s a chance that you may have to manage external judgment and internal guilt for having quit, but don’t let that be the driver. It might also be challenging at first to frame the quit as a win in conversations and on resumes, but it’s just words that you command.
You don’t need to fill the void immediately, either. It can be very liberating to remove the sense of obligation to an outdated self-imposed objective. Your time or attention doesn’t all have to be productive. It’s okay to enjoy that.
Your Turn
While quitting can be a power move, it doesn’t have to be permanent. Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki has retired several times. Spirited Away came out in 2001, after a brief retirement in the late 1990s, and then he produced The Wind Rises as his final film in 2013 – until he returned from retirement again in 2017 to create even more. Winners don’t quit everything, they quit the right things.
What is one thing that you’re holding on to that no longer deserves your energy? If you don’t want to speak about it, just drop a comment down below the “Related Posts” section and let me know that you’re on it.
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