Quitting: How to know when to hold and when to fold

0:02 A listener production. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Crappy to Happy. This week, I want to talk to you about when you need to quit. I alluded to this in the last solo episode that I did around the topic of procrastination and how sometimes maybe the reason that we're not making progress on something is because we're just not that interested in it anymore, and because we see quitting as such a negative thing, we continue to push and persevere even when something is no longer of interest to us or has any real value. So I thought I would dive deeper into that topic today. It's something that I've been really thinking about a lot lately, particularly I think in the space that I'm in in online business, I've seen a lot of people rise to great levels of success. They're making a lot of money, they're sort of the leaders in the field in the industry, and then I'm seeing many of them just all the plug and walk away from these outwardly, you know, very successful profitable businesses because their heart just is not in it anymore. What I'm also seeing is the feedback coming through that people are really appreciative of them being open about that and almost giving permission for other people to also walk away from something. So let's talk about this issue of quitting. A few years ago, obviously, I work as a life coach. I also I am a clinical psychologist,

1:34 but I was a coaching psychologist first, and a few years ago I was working with a client and it became really clear that the goal that she was working towards was just not relevant to her anymore. And you know, the background story was that she had started to pursue a university degree and establish a new career because she had walked away from a family business and that was a decision that they had made in their family, with her and her partner. And then circumstances changed and they found themselves going back to the family business, which meant that this degree was she was pursuing was not necessary anymore.

2:17 It was going to be really challenging for her to continue with that. She had a whole lot of other things that she was juggling, but she really resisted this idea of walking away without finishing it. And I think we can all relate to that, especially when you've worked hard to appoint To walk away without finishing what you start just doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel like it's a sensible thing to do, and there's a lot of reasons for that. And so it was the first time I really found myself coaching someone around letting go of a goal and helping her to be okay with the decision to actually drop that and put her attention and her energy and her resources in to something else that was going to be more relevant and more worthwhile. And then again recently, I've been working with a client and again we're working together towards a goal that she has set, an important goal, and something happened and the parameters changed, the goalposts changed, and I said to her, well, at this point, let's reassess, let's reevaluate, is this still something that is worth pursuing to you? Is this still something that's meaningful? Is it still what you want? Given these changed parameters, I guess different requirements, different time frame, different level of input and required. She was able to conclude that, yes, it is something that she wants to continue to pursue.

3:47 But it was a really important conversation to have because mostly what we're told is well, you just you get up and you keep going, you persist, you see things through to the end. Winners never quit as never win, never ever ever give up. These are the slogans that we see all the time. Our world just worships these qualities that we associate with persistence and with seeing things through. It's heroic and it's courageous, and tenacity and perseverance and commitment. These are the things that we love to see and the stories that we love to hear. Whereas walking away from something we associate with failing or being flaky or weak willed, no persistence, no commitment, And nobody wants to be associated with words like that. Nobody wants to feel like that, and nobody wants to think other people are going to perceive them as a quitter. Sometimes, though, the best thing that you can do is to walk away from a goal. So let's talk about why we struggle Apart from the obvious which I just mentioned. Let's talk about why we struggle so much to walk away from a goal, Apart from that perceived negative connotation that quitting has within ourselves. And also, as I said, what we think other people think of us is this cognitive bias called the sunk cost effect. It's a sunk cost bias,

5:17 and what that means is that the more you have put in. The more you've sunk resources into a project or a goal, the more you have invested your time, your energy, your money, even your identity. You know, like when you are pursuing something and people know that that's what you're pursuing, that that's what you want to do, then we are reluctant to walk away because we will have lost It's like it's a waste of all of that energy and time we've put into something. To walk away, you would be walking away and basically cutting your losses, and we don't want to lose, so we continue to put more resources into something, sometimes long after it is sensible, sometimes when we really would be better to cut our losses and walk away. So the sunk cost bias is that we basically continue to invest in something because we're afraid to lose what we have already put into it.

6:17 We consider that to have been a waste. We don't like how that feels. Another thing is that we as humans don't love uncertainty. When you are at a decision point and you're deciding whether to continue with a goal or to walk away from it, you don't actually know how it's going to turn out. You don't actually know if this thing's going to be a winner, if you're going to succeed. And this could be a business, it could be a UNI course, it could be training for a marathon, it could be any number of things. But you don't know how it's going to turn out until you get to the end. And if you stop, if you decide I'm not going to pursue this anymore, I'm going to cut my losses and water away, then you're always left with the what if, Like what if I had stuck it out, What if I had seen it through?

7:06 What if things would have turned around and maybe I would have finally had that windfall. Maybe I would have finally got this business off the ground. Maybe I would have finally started turning a profit. Maybe I would have finally got that promotion in that industry where I've been kind of stagnating. Something might happen and change and turn things around so that there would be a positive outcome. And if you walk away, you will never know if that might have happened. Because we humans don't like uncertainty, then we are much more likely to stick and to see something through, because it is only by seeing it through to the end that we actually know if things would have turned around. And sometimes that again, it's just I was going to say good money after about it, but it's not even money, it's time, energy, resources. It's like we continue to invest in something that is never going to give us what we think it's going to because we are so averse to loss. Walking away is sure loss. We are surely going to lose everything that we have invested to this point. We tend to be much more emotionally impacted by the fear of loss than the prospect of gain. This is why, actually the only time that we quitting is seen as a good thing and that people do tend to be happy quitting is when they literally quit while they're ahead. And interestingly enough, oftentimes our loss aversion, our fear of loss, will actually

8:38 cause us to quit sooner than we should have. When we are ahead. If we continued on a winning path, we may continue to make gains, but we tend to walk away because we are afraid that if we keep on going then at some point our luck will turn, and so we take our win and we walk away. When we're losing, we tend to keep on going because we keep on hoping that we will turn this thing around and sometimes again to our own detriment, when we really would be better to pull the pin, to make a decision, to cut our losses and to walk away and put our energy into something else. Now, our identities are very much entwined in what we do in our goals, and not just like in our job or our career or our you know, the business, but our beliefs and our value systems. Let's say you're vegan. I used to be vegan. Let's say you're vegan, and everybody knows that about you. Look, there's a whole lot of your identity tied up with that. There's a whole lot of values and beliefs tied up with that decision. And if you change that, if you walk away from that kind of lifestyle, then again it's almost like we don't like to walk away from a part of what we see as a part of our identity. That's very much the case for career as well, whether you are into sports, you're in a band. I don't know. I'm trying to think of examples where you do something and it sort of becomes

10:09 a part of who you are, it's what you're known for, and to walk away from that can feel really frightening, can feel really scary, And again there's this whole lot of wrapped up in this is a whole lot of like what will people think? I think we need to be really honest about that part. I think so much of our aversion, our avoidance, and our sticktuitiveness, like sticking with something even after maybe deep down we know that there's a better way is because we are so worried about what other people think. So we'll talk about that in a minute, and then we just were we prefer our status quo. In my book Crapy to Happy, Love what You Do my blue book, which is about how to find more satisfaction in your work, I talked about everything being a decision. Even if you're in a job that you don't find satisfying, if you were choosing to stay in that job, then that in itself is a choice.

11:09 You might tell yourself you don't have a choice, but actually what you're doing is you're choosing the status quo. And many times when we say we can't we don't know yet. I can't decide yet what I want to do. I can't decide if I want to stick with this or I want to leave and do something different. What we're actually doing is we're choosing the status quo, and there's a whole lot of better the devil, you know, kind of wrapped up in that too, Like even if this is bad, even if this is not that comfortable, even if this is not that satisfying, even this is not that important to me anymore. It doesn't give me the satisfaction or the joy, or the financial reward or the challenge or the stimulation or whatever it is that I thought it did or that it used to. Again, it's our intolerance of uncertainty, our discomfort with ambiguity, with the not knowing. It's that whole better the devil, you know thing that causes to stick with things even if they're not that comfortable, rather than walk away and take a risk in the pursuit of something different when we don't know what that outcome is going to be. So, if you are pursuing something, if you're pursuing a goal, if you're pursuing a career, if you've spent years at university studying, if you've been trying to get your own business off the ground, and maybe you have, and maybe it's even a successful business, but maybe it doesn't give you what you thought it was going to. I can really relate to this. I've been self employed for longer

12:40 than I was ever actually employed. I'm in a lot of business circles with other self employed people, and I see a lot of people who are just pushing and pushing and pushing year in, year out, trying to make this thing a success. I had a great conversation on this podcast with Victoria Devine from She's on the Money, where we talked about this like worshiping entrepreneurship and how everybody wants the laptop lifestyle, and everybody wants the freedom, and everybody wants the flexibility, and so you see all of these people going out on their own and launching their own thing, which I get, obviously I'm right there. But sometimes actually there's a lot to be said for having a job. There's a lot to be said for having stable income, somebody paying into your superannuation, paid holiday leave, paid sick leave, long service leave, all of those benefits, not to mention things like the social connection and the structure and all of the things the opportunities and the challenges that can come from working in an organization, depending on where you work. But if you are starting your own business, or if you are in your own business and you make the decision to go back to a job, it can feel like quitting, Like you can feel like you've failed if you make the decision to pack it all up and go back to the nine to five, especially in this world which tells you that you know it's all about you can make a million dollars, and you can live where you want and do what you want, and you know it's all smoke and mirrors most of it.

14:06 To be perfectly honest with you, which is why I think in my world where all of these people are publicly walking away from their business, even when they are financially successful, I think a lot of these people who have been slogging away for years trying to make a success of something, feel so relieved that they feel like they've almost been given permission, like I said, to be able to do the same, to make the decision to go back to something that's more stable. So how do you know when to quit and whether you should quit or whether you should stick to a goal. I've been reading a book called Quit, The Power of Knowing When to walk Away. So if this is a topic that's of interested, then I would recommend that you go and grab it because I haven't finished reading it, but it's a really interesting read. And there's a few little tips in that book that I thought that I would share with you. And one is, when you set out on a particular path or project, or you start to pursue a goal, can you build in kill criteria at the outset instead of this is what I'm going to do, this is what I'm going to achieve, and I'm just going to slog away until I get there, and that is success and anything else is failure. I'm going to do this thing unless, so building in an unless unless what? Unless?

15:34 What changes? Unless what would need to happen to make you rethink this goal or this project. And one of the suggestions is that for your kill criteria is to use states and dates. So if you are, for example, launching your own business, let's use that example, since I've used that a couple of times. Let's say you're in your own business and you are focused on a particular revenue, a certain level of profit that you want to generate from this business. When you look around at what other people are doing in this space, whether it is your own business or whether it's in your particular career. How long does it normally take for somebody to get to certain milestones. You can use this for even things like examples that she gives in the book of things like professional athletes, like for the most successful in the field, how fast were they running when they were fifteen, eighteen, twenty two. You know, if you are in you want to be a concert pianist, like how successful were people at certain points in their career? If you are in academia and you want to get a professor'ship, like on average, how long does it take for people to get certain milestones in their career and build those in? So this is what I want. But if I haven't achieved this state, if I haven't achieved this milestone by this date, well then I will quit that state day that. If I haven't done X by why will be different depending on

17:06 what your goal is. But having at the outset some expectation of what where you should be by certain milestones and being very comfortable to walk away at that point if you haven't achieved that, or at least being willing to review where you're at and what changes you might need to make in order to make it worthwhile to continue pursuing. I think that is so important, the kill criteria. I think the other thing is just being willing to continually ask yourself, is this still important to me? Are the reasons that I started this thing still valid? Does this still give me joy, meaning fulfillment, satisfaction, whatever the reasons were, whatever the analysis was, when you chose to pursue this particular project or goal pursuit, then is it still relevant? Is that still true? Because if it's not, then just sticking to it for the sake of sticking to it is honestly potentially just a waste of your time and energy and resources. I was just thinking, how many times have we been forced out, forced to quit something, and then this world of opportunities opens up and we hear so many stories about you know, let's say your partner leaves you, not your choice, maybe somebody left you.

18:39 But what the outcome of that was when you were forced out of that relationship was that something new appeared, something much more fulfilling, When actually you could have probably made the decision to leave that relationship yourself years before, but you were sticking with it. But then when the decision was forced on you, the world opens up, same as if you get redundant at your job. If you are forced out of something illness, injury, something changes in your life and you are forced to abandon your project or the thing that you thought was important to you, that you were pursuing, but then something else appears. You would never know what that something else was. You would never have given yourself the opportunity to see what else was out there that might be better and more fulfilling and more meaningful had you not been forced to quit.

19:32 But why so often do we wait to be forced out? We're so reluctant to make that decision ourselves for all of the reasons that I've just explained. The other thing is to remember that goals are not necessarily pass or fail. I think that keeps us really trapped. We either succeed, we win, we achieve, we do the thing, or we quit, we walk away, and that is failure, that is everything was wasted if you choose to walk away. I think it's really important to start rethinking what goals are about, because there are so many lessons to be learned along the way. If you get halfway to doing something and then you decide that this is not the thing and that you want to walk away from this. What experiences did you have? What lessons did you learn? How has this set you up before knowing what the next thing might be? What do you gain back by walking away?

20:25 What do you then kind of shure up in terms of time, energy, resources that you are putting into this thing that you now can devote and divert to something else. We have to stop thinking about this past fail binary kind of nature of goals, because that is not what they are about. We're all making progress and learning lessons along the way. We need to also just remember that people don't think about us like we think they think about us. There is so much if you're honest with yourself, there is so much. What will people think if I quit this, if I change course, if I decide this is not what I want anymore? People for the most part really don't care. They are not judging you as harshly as you are judging yourself. If they are, they're not your people. But mostly what we think other people will think is really not what other people will think.

21:16 So we really have to let go of that. We honestly have to let go of what we think other people are going to think of us. Like I said in my industry, like people are being praised Lord and for quitting their businesses, very successful businesses, and that is being seen as a sign of courage and bravery and authenticity. And I really love that, Like I love that people are being valued for their being honest about the fact that this is just not making them happy like it used to. They're not pretending that anymore that this is like some amazing thing when it's not, even when it is very financially successful. And one other really interesting tip that I read in this book is this idea of monkeys and pedestals. So this comes from the CEO of a company called x which is a subsidiary of Alphabet which obviously Google, so big company, right, And this is about like assessing ideas for you know, tech ideas and like big kind of leading edge money making ventures. Imagine that you want to train a monkey to juggle flamethrowers on a pedestal in the park. If you can do that, you are onto a winner. There are two components to that to making that happen. One is training the monkey and the other is building the pedestal, and many of us will focus on building the pedestal. So, for example,

22:47 if you want to launch a business, If you want to start a business, then we will focus on choosing the business name, registering the domain, deciding the colors, on the logo, getting a web designer. All of these things are building the pedestal. We haven't yet trained the monkey. We don't yet know if what we've got is a really viable proposition. So in deciding whether to continue to pursue this path, focus first on training the monkey. Work out what is going to be the most challenging thing about this venture, and tackle that first. And if that is not going to succeed, if that is not a winner, then never mind building the pedestal. Just move on. And so you will move on much more quickly. You will know much more quickly whether this is worth pursuing or it's not if you focus on the most challenging bit first, so you can apply that to whatever goal that it is that you're pursuing. I guess so one example that she gives in the book is pursuing that tenured career path.

23:51 If you worked in academia, for example, and you can do a lot of pedestal building by jumping around to different adjunct professors this post doc that none of which is getting you closer to your ultimate goal of a tenured position. And you can probably think of examples in other careers as well. You can spend a lot of time jumping around sideways doing all different things which are essentially the equivalent of pedestal building, when they are not getting you closer to the actual goal. When we're confronted with the challenge, when we hit a hurdle in our goal in the pursuit of our goal, we can tend to busy ourselves with pedestal building. We can tend to busy ourselves with doing a lot of little things and tweaks and things that we think are being productive or helping us and moving forward and making progress, when an actual fact, they are not doing anything to overcome the bigger challenge, which is actually making this thing work, making this thing viable, making it more satisfying, more meaningful. We make all of these little tweaks and changes which are not ultimately solving the problem, or as if we really focused in on the main problem in the first place, and we were willing to make a decision based on that and to walk away more quickly. If we recognized more quickly that it's not gonna work, then we'd all be happier, and we'd all waste a lot less time and effort and energy. And one great quote that I

25:23 think is worth sharing is that life is too short to spend your time on opportunities that are no longer worthwhile. So we need to get really honest with ourselves about whether what we are pursuing is really still worthwhile. And sometimes it requires somebody external to us, somebody who's not invested, somebody who's not in it, to help give us that honest feedback. So if you've got somebody like that in your life who can help you to weigh up some of these things and to be willing to let you be honest about where you're at, as opposed to the people in your life who are going to tell you no, no, you've got to keep you've come this far, you've got to keep going, and who prop you up with optimism when sometimes it's misplaced that optimism. Optimism will keep you going sometimes for way longer than you should. And of course I'm not saying that we should all just walk away.

26:21 And quit everything. I think that what I'm saying is we have limited time and resources and energy in this lifetime, and we need to really work out what is worth pursuing and be willing to be honest with ourselves and honest with the people around us, and to drop our ego and to drop our thoughts about what we think other people think of us, and be willing to change course if something is no longer worth pursuing. I hope that's been helpful. I think it's a really interesting topic and we'd love to know what you think. Like I said, the book that I've been reading is called Quit The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. I may even see if the author wants to come and have a conversation with me on the podcast sometime in the future.

27:10 In the meantime, that's my little summary. I hope it's been helpful. Can't wait to catch you on the next episode of Crapy the Happy Listener.