Don’t Quit When It Gets Hard

&gt; No matter what you do, it’s time to stop watching Netflix every night and browsing webshops for the newest clothes.<p>This is a very narrow view of the world. Success is not explicitly defined as spending every waking hour working. A person who is content with their lot in life, at any level, is already successful.

If you don&#x27;t quit, maybe you&#x27;ll never start the next thing that will succeed. A blind &#x27;just work harder&#x27; ethic doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean success. It&#x27;s such crap to say that everyone who never quits succeeds.<p>Not only that, but it means that if you decide to do something else, you&#x27;ll feel like it was a moral failure to stop doing what you were doing. So you&#x27;ll blame yourself, and you won&#x27;t examine honestly why didn&#x27;t it work, what was things were out of my control. Learning from the experience is the most valuable part.<p>I spent close to 10 years on something that didn&#x27;t succeed. The problem was it didn&#x27;t fail either, so you just keep telling yourself that it&#x27;s going to happen one day. Looking back on it objectively it was never going to work.<p>Take an honest view, don&#x27;t just sing in the choir of the church of you.

&quot;Know when to quit and when not to quit&quot; is better advice then just &quot;don&#x27;t quit&quot;. However, I think this article is aimed at the situation where you know you shouldn&#x27;t quit, but you do because it&#x27;s hard. For example, regular exercise.<p>Something that has worked for me is committing myself to a short amount time doing the thing I don&#x27;t want to do. I&#x27;ll tell myself &quot;after 5 minutes, if I still don&#x27;t want to do this then I&#x27;ll stop&quot;. Nearly always once I start washing the dishes or start a run, I&#x27;m happy to finish.

If only it were so simple.<p>It is that simple when you are, say, running an endurance race. Abide &quot;don&#x27;t quit&quot; and you will finish.<p>But in real life, you&#x27;re presented with a continual stream of alternative opportunities.<p>And these days &quot;I quit&quot; has subtly morphed into &quot;I pivot.&quot;

An important lesson I have learned recently is that doing hard things never pays dividends in the shorter run; in fact, it make you miserable in that period. The benefits are only realised in the longer run. What if you commit yourself to send one newspaper pitch every week? Quite likely, you will face rejections and it will make feel dejected. However, gradually, your pitches will start improving, you&#x27;ll get better at writing them, and eventually, one of yours will get accepted. Then, probably another. Hurray! you have broken into publishing industry as a freelance writer.<p>From all the things related to writing I have read, this advice is present in almost every one of them. The recipe sounds simple but it&#x27;s easy enough to quit with just one rejections. In writing, business, dating or anything that requires effort. If you persist, however, don&#x27;t take failure personally, it doesn&#x27;t take long to get better at that.

I like to face difficult problems, but I do expect to gain something in return. I also expect actual challenges and not just a pile of annoyances.<p>Unfortunately, most of the time the reward is that you just get to work on even more annoying problems.

Don&#x27;t quit just <i>because</i> it gets hard.<p>But don&#x27;t persist if it isn&#x27;t worth it. Which decision should be made independently of personal discomfort.<p>(Also, in general don&#x27;t take life advice from 20 something Internet marketers. Why do you clog up the interwebs people? Please quit! Not because it&#x27;s hard but because volume of SEO junk to sell some coaching books is simply not needed by humanity. Lets improve the quality of the net with original ideas rather than rehashing again and again. Do something worth doing or do not do at all.)

&gt;&gt; Darius Foroux: &quot;I’m an entrepreneur, author, and podcaster. I also research tools to build a better life, career, and business. Join my free newsletter if you want to get my latest articles delivered to your inbox.&quot;<p>Another collection of pseudointellectual predigested positive platitudes.

I agree when the challenge is getting to the goal, but people often quit when they don&#x27;t believe in the goal anymore.

In the Coursera course about learning, one thing one of the professor say is that every successful people have this in common: persistence. Nothing can be achieved without persistence.

On the flip side of that, don&#x27;t stick with a failing endeavor just because it is hard and you have put a lot of energy into it. Make an intelligent analysis of your current position and trajectory in life, and decide whether or not to change your direction based on your long-term goals. Sometimes sticking with it is the right answer... sometimes it isn&#x27;t.

I doubt it&#x27;s that simple. There are things you should just quit - things that mess with your mental stability. Then there are things that exercise the right muscles but is downright hard, the ones you should persist for the value you gain at the end of it. Being patient is a great virtue till it isn&#x27;t.<p>Edit: typo

I like that drawing. In music I represent learning as a black map, with gray areas around tiny white spots, which are valid intuitions&#x2F;concepts.<p>Learning something really knew, means whole black map, blindness, you can only walk randomly and think you hit a white spot but it&#x27;s only a gray area. Then you have more gray areas but they don&#x27;t work right yet. After a while you can finely tune the walk and locate the white spots. When you have lots of white spots, you know.<p>And if you&#x27;re fast, it&#x27;s just because you don&#x27;t have to walk anymore, you can jumpskip right to the appropriate white spot to evaluate a situation or phenomenon.

Never quit on your own goals.<p>Its fine to quit when other peoples goals involve using your man-power for their own gain and you see less and less reason to continue being a part of it.

He is speaking in the context of once you set a goal then don&#x27;t quit. Eg: I have to get a job in one month. Now, once you define a goal that is measurable and is important to you. Will you be able to watch netflix if you are consumed by your goal day and night? If your thoughts are fooling you,then you will get discouraged by every small failure. I think it helps to be less emotional and mechanical in the pursuit of a goal.

Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward by Henry Cloud.[1]<p>&quot;Endings:The Good Cannot Begin Until the Bad Ends&quot;<p>Sometimes you have to quit the bad or good so that you can start the good or better.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;amzn.to&#x2F;2yJiImE" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;amzn.to&#x2F;2yJiImE</a>

Idk much about other things in this essay, but his goal is always on imagination line, while in reality it is, well, constrained somewhere on reality curve (at most).<p>Given that imagined goal = real, it is pretty easy to not quit. Hard part is, complex goals are often just a mirage.

&#x27;A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds&#x27; — Emerson

To look at this article from my own viewpoint(who else&#x27;s?), this is about &quot;do I stop out now, wait, or move my stop loss and hope it turns around(hah!)&quot;.<p>Know when to keep going, but more importantly, <i>know when to quit</i>. Not knowing when to quit is how you go bankrupt, die, and&#x2F;or cause other people to do either.

I just want to make enough to where I don’t <i>have</i> to work in this industry, at least for a little while. It’s fucking awful.

I wonder if Darius has heard of Borderline Personality Disorder. I immediately thought of it reading this post. I suffer from BPD myself, and I&#x27;ve noticed far greater symptoms of wanting to quit compared to people around me - the grass is always greener, and I want something until I have it. That has resulted in very unstable jobs, careers, and relationships.<p>Just like Darius&#x27;s post, actually following up and quitting didn&#x27;t make me happier. Rather, worse. There&#x27;s a honeymoon period, but soon I disliked the new thing, and wanted to go back to the old thing.<p>Deep down, it turns out this is a symptom of not loving myself and being happy with who I am - and feelings of neglect, shame, and guilt from childhood.<p>I seek new jobs, experiences, friends, and relationships because I think that will make me content - but that&#x27;s flawed as you will never love anything until you love yourself; and surprisingly my empty self identity <i>is</i> the cause of hating programming, or hating product management, or hating my work.<p>Other symptoms of BPD are seeing things in black and white (&#x27;splitting&#x27;), wide emotional swings, intense fears of detachment, chronic feelings of emptiness, and more. Those are usually traced to childhood abandonment; whether it&#x27;s losing parents, moving countries, or a troublesome upbringing.<p>If any of this sounds like you, I&#x27;d suggest looking more into BPD. There&#x27;s a book called &quot;I hate you, don&#x27;t leave me&quot;; that while not perfect and critiqued in some areas, is a great explanation of BPD. But also, don&#x27;t self-diagnose; don&#x27;t think you have BPD just because you want to quit.

Good read

If you quit, you must know you have given another human a chance to do better than you did.