Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 32 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Selective quitting
— From Born For This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do by Chris Guillebeau (Here’s a book review I wrote and here’s my interview with Chris at the New York Public Library.)
A quote that is frequently attributed to Einstein is, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” In Born for This, Chris Guillebeau makes the case that “most of us are smart enough to realize that if we try something new and it doesn’t work we can’t just keep doing the same thing and expect different results.” When this happens, we quit and move on, but the key word here is new.
What happens when it’s not new? Guillebeau continues, “the greater problem comes when we’ve become conditioned to success according to a certain method or plan of action. When something works for a while and then it stops working, that’s when it’s tough to change. We don’t keep attempting the same thing over and over because we’re stupid, and it’s not because we don’t know any better. It’s just that we love the familiar and change is hard.”
What to do?
We must go after the right opportunities and selectively quit projects or courses of action that are not in our best interest. But “knowing when to give up and when to keep going can feel like an unachievable superpower,” says Guillebeau. Fortunately, he offers four strategies you can put to work whenever you find yourself in this situation.
1. When the stakes are low, make changes or give up quickly. The best time to make a change is earlier in the project, when the stakes are low and, preferably, when the investment of time, effort, money, etc., has not been as significant as closer to the end (but more on this in point 3 below).
2. Fight your FOMO. FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out “is a very human and natural human emotion, it can be dangerous if it prevents you from quitting when it’s long past time to give up. After all, if you want to be successful, you can’t live your life out of fear.”
3. Ignore sunk costs as much as possible. The term sunk costs is used in accounting and finance to mean “a cost that an entity has incurred, and which it can no longer recover by any means. Sunk costs should not be considered when making the decision to continue investing in an ongoing project, since these costs cannot be recovered.” (Source: AccountingTools.com) But the fact that this term is used in finance doesn’t mean that it doesn’t apply to us if we are not in the field. Why do we keep watching a really bad movie and hoping that it gets better, when the logical thing would be to stop watching or leave the theatre? Because we have invested our time (and perhaps our money) in it, and we’d like to see if we can somehow make the most out of that investment. Why don’t we get rid of things that clutter our homes and offices? Because feel bad about getting rid of them when we think of all the money and other resources that we’ve spent on acquiring them. Why do some people keep working at a job they don’t enjoy? Because they’ve spent years at the company. When you take sunk costs into consideration you become chained to a false commitment, and this prevents you from choosing better options. Do not take into account sunk costs when making a decision.
4. When the stakes are high, ask yourself two questions. The questions are very simple, but don’t let that fool you, the answers will give you much clarity:
- Is it working?
- Do you still enjoy it?
The answers should come to you quickly and intuitively. If both answers are yes, then keep going. If both answers are no, then quit. The tricky part comes when the answers are different: when it’s working but you don’t enjoy it, or it’s not working but you do enjoy it. In either case a change is needed to get you to where you want to be. Here’s a brief diagram of what the questions and answers look like:
- Is it working? → Yes → Do you still enjoy it?→ Yes → Keep going
- Is it working? → Yes → Do you still enjoy it? → No → Change something
- Is it working? → No → Do you still enjoy it? → Yes → Change something
- Is it working? → No → Do you still enjoy it? → No→ Give up
And while giving up or quitting has a bad connotation and we don’t want to think of ourselves as quitters, just remember that by quitting something you’re not giving up on you. On the contrary, you are giving yourself the opportunity to fully chase those goals and dreams that you want to achieve.
ACTION
TODAY: Think about one project or commitment that you have going on and that is spreading yourself too thin. Apply the four strategies above and figure out whether it merits continuing or not.
FUTURE: Adopt these four strategies for figuring out what you want to keep and what you need to give up. Once you take on additional projects, make a point of evaluating your progress every so often by running your projects through these strategies. This way you’ll ensure you’re involved with projects/actions that are moving you forward, instead of weighing you down.
Know someone who needs to selectively quit a thing or two? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!