Nobody Knows When to Quit

When things don’t work, you try to figure out a way through. You’ve invested time. You’ve invested resources. And at some point a question arrives that you can’t answer cleanly: should I invest more, or am I just dealing with sunk cost?

The question shows up everywhere.

You’re in a bad relationship. You wonder what exactly is wrong. You’ve given part of your life to it. You change yourself. You hope tomorrow might be better. And you know, even as you hope, that it still may not work out.

You started a business that was fine at the start. Now the leads have dried up and every month is a struggle. You have financial pressure, family commitments, and a hope that the future will turn. It may. It may not.

You hired someone. Good person, not quite right for the role. Probation has passed and you still feel things could be better. You invest in training, not sure if it’s worth it.

You’re learning a subject you hate, and you can’t decide whether to keep going — maybe you’ll start to love it — or quit now.

Quitting is not easy or obvious. Neither is staying. The honest problem underneath all of these is the same one: we don’t know what the future holds for us.

Everyone knows Thomas Edison for not quitting. No one knows the countless people who were ruined because they didn’t quit at the right time. There is no list of their names. The “right time” to quit only exists in hindsight — which is to say, it doesn’t really exist at all when you need it.

During every downturn, some people sell their assets and others buy them. In the moment, no one knows who has done the right thing. Then the future arrives, and we build narratives backwards to support whichever theory survived.

So what’s left, if the answer can’t be known in advance?

One thing I’ve found useful: seek out the people who have walked your path closely before you. They can’t tell you the future either. But they’ve seen more of the terrain. They give you a better read on your potential and your possible fates. They help you manage the risks and notice the opportunities you’d otherwise miss.

Beyond that — do your best to figure it out, and know in your heart that it is never easy. Then detach yourself from the outcome. Good or bad, the outcome is not yours, and there is no benefit in claiming it. The decision was yours. What the world did with it was not.

Life is uncertain. Most things are beyond our control. We are here to figure it out anyway — unapologetically, and unpompously.