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Just Quit!

Or better yet, don’t even start!

Quitting has a bad reputation, but it can be one of the best decisions you can make. 

As children, and later as students, we were often being told to “not be lazy”, and people who are busy or hard-working are applauded. 

But this advice is flawed in a subtle but dramatic way. Busy work is not the same as focused work. It is entirely possible to be busy all day and not accomplishing anything of importance.

The way we were taught in school was in 50 minutes blocks of something, and then we would be interrupted to do something else. 

The logic, they say, is that children get bored with one subject, and this switching adds diversity to the school day. But what it actually does is prevents anyone from going deep on any one topic. 

We carry this habit of “multi-tasking” into our adult life, and working on multiple projects at a time, doing a tiny bit of each day. 

I used to think that doing multi-tasking, I was productive, but I was just busy.

The Cost of Task Switching

This cost became extremely obvious to me when working on complex software projects. Just getting into the context of thinking where I left off would take up most of the hour, and then I’d have to switch to something else. My mind got an excellent workout, but my output grew at snail speed. 

Repeated task switching does not allow you to go deep and to build expertise. And it costs you time that will add up. It is a perfect recipe to become and stay average. 

The solution is to quit! Or better yet, don’t even start! 

If you don’t have it in you to finish this project or become the best at what you do, quit and choose something else. Don’t quit soon, quit now. Ignore the sunk costs: “but I’ve already invested so much in this!”

Quit, but quit strategically. Don’t become a serial quitter. Instead, quit so that you can focus on the projects you want and can finish. So you have the time and energy to become the best in the world at what you do. 

Quitting is especially important if you find yourself on a dead-end path. A dead-end path is different from a plateau. A plateau can be overcome; a dead-end cannot. Every second you stay on a dead-end path is a second wasted that could be spent on the other path, which would get you more fulfillment and personal growth. 

Dead-end paths could be a business that is now obsolete and dying, a job where you’ve become stuck in a rut, a project that is not moving forward despite your best efforts, or a relationship with no potential for growth. 

A quick aside about “The best in the world.”

Becoming the “best in the world” can feel very challenging until you realize that “the best in the world” does not mean “the best on the planet”. You get to choose and define your world, your market, the people you would like to delight, to be “the best” for. And you can grow from there. 

I will end with a quote from the book that inspired this article:

“Quit the wrong stuff.
Stick with the right stuff.
Have the guts to do one or the other.”

The Dip – by Seth Godin

Say No, so you can say Yes

My son was born two months ago. It feels like time got compressed. I used to be able to do so much and still have spare time.

But these days, I often find myself not able to finish doing what I set out to do. It often happens that I feel overwhelmed.

The new situation has forced me to look deeper at the concept of prioritizing your day.

A to-do list does not work.

Prioritizing is hard. It is hard because it is emotional work.

It is easy (and lazy) to say: everything on this list needs to be done today. It is hiding from the hard emotional work of prioritizing.

When you think about your priorities, you need to get clear with yourself about what is truly important for you. Where do you want to get, what do you want to accomplish, whom do you want to spend your time with.

You have to say “No” to many things on your list so you can say “Yes” to the most important one.

If I say “yes” to more computer time, I have to say “no” to more rest time, or I have to say “no” to more family time.

The truth is we all get 24 hours a day, and saying “yes” to everything is a trap. You are not being honest with yourself, and you are not brave enough to say “no” to distractions and to other “world emergencies” that have nothing to do with you.

When you work on a project, it is easy to want to do everything right from the start. From week one, if at all possible. But I have discovered that breaking down what I want to do in a list of priorities helps me ship the project faster and with the most impact. It also removes all the distractions I would hide behind. It shifts my thinking away from “what would be cool and pretty” towards “what has the most value and how can I deliver that most effectively”?

How about you? Does prioritizing come easy, or is it something that you avoid?