When To Quit

Written by a human, for humans, always.

When many people think about what it means to succeed...

The last thing they think about is quitting.

However...

Most people end up failing in their lives...

Either because they quit too early...

Or they end up quitting far too late.

See...

Quitting is not the opposite of success.

Success often requires us to quit...

But at the right times...

For the right reasons...

And with the right things.

So the question becomes...

When to quit?

What you need to start with...

Is looking at what you are quitting.

Are you quitting on things that lead to your success...

Or things that are actively preventing you from gaining the success you want?

One area where many people go wrong...

Is they end up quitting the things that would allow them to move forward...

While continuing to do everything that is setting them back.

It is like trying to run with a foot planted in the ground.

You cannot get far because you are not moving that planted foot.

The best you can do is try to do the splits...

And assuming you do not hurt yourself in the process...

You can still only get so far if you refuse to move one of your feet.

You have to be willing to quit the things that are keeping you from moving if you are ever going to move forward.

The next thing we have to look at here...

Is how long you are trying to do something.

Have you given something enough time to actually work?

I see this all the time in marketing...

Where people try to implement a "new strategy"...

Do it for one week...

Then decide it doesn't work and move on to the next strategy.

That is not enough time for a marketing strategy to actually work.

Depending on the type of strategy...

You need to at least give it a month...

Sometimes even longer...

Without changing variables along the way.

Changing variables only adds to confusion...

And creates more problems than fixes, especially early on.

Point being...

You need to give things enough time to actually begin to work and take effect.

One cannot lose 100 lbs of weight overnight...

They have to do consistent work over time.

But there is the other end of this factor too...

Are you going too long?

Have you been doing the same thing...

Over and over again...

Getting the same results but expecting something different?

That is the definition of insanity...

But many people do exactly that.

It often is fueled by the Sunk Cost Fallacy...

Where we begin to believe that we cannot stop doing something because we have invested too much time in it.

So in this scenario...

We need to come to terms with reality...

Have we really put our best efforts into making this thing work?

Have we given it more than enough time to work?

This can be made more difficult because often these things have become established as habits...

So we generally continue to do them...

Because we have simply gotten used to doing them.

Based on the research, on average, it takes 66 days to establish a habit.

So if we round up...

And we have done something for 3 months or more...

Yet still have not gotten any sort of results that we are hoping for...

Perhaps it is worth questioning why we are still doing it.

You may not decide to quit at that moment...

Maybe there is a different timeline that you have to consider and pay attention to...

Perhaps the payoff is not what you were looking for, but was nevertheless still positive.

But it is healthy to question why we continue to do the things we consistently do...

And sometimes the things we are doing are not actually benefiting us...

Which may mean we should quit them.

Then, when we look at considering quitting...

We also have to consider the motivations behind our quitting.

For instance...

Are we quitting based on fear or frustration?

The vast majority of the time, these are terrible motivations for quitting.

Fear usually has more to do with our own self-esteem than it has to do with the task we are considering quitting...

And frustration is often a necessary component for growth and something we must figure out if we are going to continue on a specific path.

You cannot become good at something until you move through that frustration.

On the other hand...

There can be good motivations to quit things.

Perhaps you had a business idea and really wanted it to work out...

And perhaps with enough time it could...

But you also have family that you need to take care of who rely on your income.

That may be a good reason to quit.

Something that most people fail to take into account are their baseline stressors.

If you are struggling to take care of your family...

That is going to establish a higher level of baseline stressors.

If you are trying to build a business...

That is also going to establish a higher level of baseline stressors.

If you look at all of the stressors in your life...

It may be more than you can handle...

And if that is the case...

It will compromise your ability to think, problem-solve, and change...

Which means that the most likely result is that you will fail because your psychophysiology cannot support your current actions.

If you are unable to get the psychophysiology figured out...

Then the smarter decision may be to quit and make sure that your family is taken care of.

That is not what most people want to hear...

But sometimes people need to hear something other than what they want.

There are situations in life where the best option available is to quit one thing...

At least for a period of time...

Until you get other things figured out.

Learning to navigate that tide of when to stop one thing and when to focus on a different thing is powerful when done well...

And painful when done poorly.

Then the final thing to consider...

The timing of when to quit.

Sometimes the answer is after a bit of time...

Such as when we have not given something enough time to work, so we put a deadline on how much longer we will allow it to go on before ending it.

Other times the answer should be immediately...

Such as when there are ethical things at stake...

Something which, for many Executives, became their downfall when they did not end something that should have never begun in the first place.

Then there are times...

Where you know something needs to end...

But you are having trouble actually doing it...

And the best solution is to seek help from someone with the ability to aid you.

There are all sorts of people whose entire careers are designed around helping people accomplish their goals...

And often part of their role is helping them figure out how to stop certain things they are challenged with.

Getting the right help at the right time may be the best solution.

At the end of the day...

Quitting is something that most people struggle with.

I am no exception to that rule.

However...

Understanding these different factors when considering whether to quit something can change everything.

Most people are hasty when they determine whether or not to quit.

Almost immediately, they provide an answer...

All without deep thinking or wisdom about why they are giving that answer so quickly...

Or whether there are other things they were not aware of consciously that were influencing their decision.

In order to make wise decisions in these considerations...

We often have to approach them from a perspective that we typically do not.

That is how we end up making better decisions on whether to quit or not.

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