You know the saying "winners never quit and quitters never win" ? Sounds good, and I've certainly used it as an excuse to stick with something that deep down I knew wasn't working. But recently a series of books, blogs and podcasts have taught me that the reality is that winners quit fast, quit often and quit without guilt - until they commit to pushing through the right obstacles for the right reasons.
Steve Jobs and Apple was a classic. When he started Apple, they launched some truly awful products that failed big time (ever heard of the LISA computer ?), and he was even kicked out of the company (!) before coming back to Apple and forcing the business to cancel projects, delete failures and focus on creating world-changing innovation. He stuck with a singular vision and started a revolution with a little thing called the ipod. A truly inspirational friend set up her own charity and has battled through obstacles so big it would scare 99.9% of people, and she has had to push through countless "No's", and distractions along the way. She's championing learning, trying, and pushing through failures to help hundreds of other mothers out there, everyday (check out www.bellyful.org.nz if you'd like to learn more).
A 'Freakonomics' podcast on 'The Upside of Quitting' (check it out here), explains two different types of cost that can help when making the tough calls. First there's the 'sunk cost' - thats the time, money and effort that you've spent getting to this point. It could be thousands of dollars, years with the same company or countless hours studying at university. Whatever the cost, you can't take it back. Unlike the second kind of cost - 'opportunity cost'. That's the value of making one future choice over another. When you choose the job just because it's the first one you've been offered, even though the pay is $10,000 less than you could get - that's the opportunity cost. Money isn't the only way to measure opportunity cost, there is the future learning, experience and chance to try something new. It might not be the plan you had at the start, but you have to forget the sunk cost, stop hoping that it will miraculously get better, and weigh up the best future opportunity costs.
But it took my favourite blogger of the day, Seth Godin, to kick start this blog post and bigger life thoughts. "The Dip" is a long essay book (seriously, its only 93 pages) that positively encourages you to quit. Just quit. Quit complaining about your life, find the burning passionate part of you and get rid of all the things that are holding you back so you can clear a path to where you want to be.
For me, I've just made the decision to quit a short-term opportunity that sounded kind of great but wasn't going to be more than a flash-in-the-pan job that I've done before... so I'm sticking. Not quitting just because something new came along. After leaving too many jobs once the initial excitement wore off, today I'm going to stay. To find my way through the Dip and know that when the long-term results pay off then I'll be there to celebrate.
Because that's the secret to success in the long term. Knowing what and when to quit, and when to push through all the obstacles in your way - with the fervent knowledge that when you do break through you'll be on the winning side. Everyone else will have quit because the going was too tough, hoping their sunk costs will somehow win bibe the secret to success, and never quite achieving their full potential.
Time to go say 'no'.
