Quitting well and often

This is one of the problems with modern self-help and positive psychology. 

They say “winners never quit and quitters never win,” but that doesn’t seem to be true. Every great winner has quit many times, at many different things. 

You can’t do everything. We are constrained by temporal physics. Time flows precisely (most of the time) and doesn’t stop while we try to “figure out what to do.” 

In my most trying seasons, I have tried to win at too many things and ended up suffering at mediocrity in all of them. 

I do not subscribe to the ideology that you can only do one thing. While it can improve your odds of success, it also strips your creativity. I am philosophically and fundamentally opposed to putting yourself in a cave, sleeping next to your desk, and doing “one thing” until you are successful. 

These people might get rich but they will accomplish very little outside of the materialistic, simpleton worldview. 

The risk of doing too much is not that you won’t be successful; it’s that you will end up not caring (or not knowing what you care about). The goal is to care deeply about where you spend your time. The meaning meter going up ensures the odds of success go up, also. 

Many (far too many) people spin aimlessly in circles, attempting to create mastery in domains they no longer care about. 

“The world is not changed by people who sort of care.” -Sally Hogshead 

How many times have we started something that seemed great… only to forget why we started (and what we’re even doing) a year later? This is part of the process of elimination. 

It’s difficult to know what we are going to be good at, and what we are going to truly enjoy, until we try it. As we expand in our capacity, we become familiar with the things we like and the things we don’t like. 

And that’s where courage is required: to eliminate the things we do not like, and keep room for the things we do. That doesn’t mean 100% of everything you do will fit into your zone of perfect genius. It means you don’t waste your life doing things out of obligation. 

Whether it’s obligation to a colleague, a family member, or a younger version of yourself — obligation is all the same. It reduces energy and throttles mastery. It is hard to get into flow state (that elusive genius mode) when you are obligated rather than excited. 

Years ago, I woke up and had a moment of clarity. I was stuck in a job that I did not particularly enjoy. I was putting myself through college and trying to earn enough money for my wife and I to afford basic needs like food and car insurance. 

I had no marketable skills, except music. From this moment of clarity, I mapped out a plan. I would learn 5 things that felt marketable to me. One of them was coding. One of them was copywriting (an obscure branch of marketing). One of them was psychology. One of them was productivity (tools like Evernote had just come on the market and “Getting Things Done” was the prevailing productivity methodology of the day). 

Some of them I liked (like copywriting and psychology). Others – like coding and productivity – I found dull and boring. As my proficiency increased, I found my passion for them going down. 

This is how you know. 

When you start getting good at something and find yourself enjoying it less, it’s likely something to cut. A year in, I cut everything except for copywriting and psychology. This process has been repeated several times over my career.

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex; it takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” -E.F. Schumacher 

Winners quit all the time. But they quit at the things that are not worth doing. 

I am not advocating laziness, I am advocating margin — enough margin for passion and mastery to develop. The vast majority of our business clients are just too busy. They are great at what they do, but if only 10% of your time is going into what you’re (a) great at and (b) passionate about, you’re going to struggle. 

The 24 hour cycle is enforced upon us all. 

Some use their time to fly while others spin around on the ground trying to inch forward. 

The recipe for greatness is knowing what to quit and knowing what to maintain. Sometimes the gap between this knowledge and the end target is long and arduous. This is where passion fills in the gaps. 

Every quarter, I take inventory of where my time went and what it’s doing. If you put 100 hours into something, you want it to matter. 

I will organize things into three categories: 

• What should be decreased or eliminated entirely? 
• What should be increased and improved? 
• What should be left alone, unaffected? 

This gives you a Birds Eye view of your time. 

You are no longer an unconscious participant in your life, but a governor over your direction. Where you’re going and how you get this is partially up to you and no one else…