The idea of this article has originated while working on my set list of goals. When working parallelly on different goals or ideas, progress was very minimal but the entire day remained occupied all the time. So what’s the solution ? work more hours ? pause the ideas or goals ? We can quit less important goal or task as well. Why I am using word “quit” instead of pause or delay ?
What if you have three set goals at the moment, and you can achieve one goal around in 2-3 months, then you can definitely pause other ideas for now and look after you done with first goal. But what if you have long term goals, business ideas, and you are just starting, and you just want to stick to all because those are your ideas. Will you be able carry all together, to put a hold on them or delay the other ideas?
I am talking in context of starting a business, working on startup, where there is no time line when your one idea is going to boom. You need to understand the importance of quitting. If I say in other words Strategic quitting. We will explore both the points in the article.
First of all we all know, working on multiple things impacts your productivity to some extent. Second “quitting” is not a failure or you “gave up”. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most people aren’t stuck because they quit too early — they’re stuck because they refuse to quit at all.
Underrated: Importance of Quitting
Quitting has a branding problem. We have been always taught quitting is bad, you should continue and persist. But I am here not talking about quitting on your dream or task if you are not able to achieve. This is about “focus“, instead of working on multiple ideas at same, priorities 1 or 2 ideas or only 1 if possible.
As we discussed at the beginning pausing or delaying will work if you know the task in hand will take finite amount of time, but when you are starting with multiple different projects, you will move very very slowly with distracted attention. While working on one project, you may be thinking of 2nd project and that’s dropping your effort in current task at hand.
Let’s take an example, if you are working professional of 9-5 job, and planning to escape that. Suppose you have multiple ideas in mind, and you think you are smart enough to start on all and have resources to do that as well. On top of that you get advise from somebody saying try all ideas what you have in mind, one of them could succeed or all will work, and you also don’t want to drop any of those business ideas because you think you can do that.
What will happen ? You may succeed, exceptions are always there or may be if you are working 24/7. But if you are not one of them, then you will not go anywhere, you will struggle with very minimal, I would say not considerable progress.
Here you need to understand the importance of quitting. You have to say, let’s “quit” these 1 or 2 ideas for now or at all. If you say for “now”, you are still thinking about that dropped idea somewhere in your head, and whenever you get frustrated from your “current project” you may still start thinking about the ideas you loved at one point, and you may get derailed. so that’s why understanding the importance of quitting plays crucial role in the progress.
Now the questions is, what will happen to other chosen ideas that you dropped ? Three things.
First, when you successfully established your business, startup that you decided to proceed with, you can re-evaluate other dropped ideas, and if you really wanna proceed at that, start working on them. After becoming successful in first business, you will become experienced ,and you will you better resources along with your own successful journey.
Second thing, you may want to scale up your current business, and want to stick with that. You are good and happy with “quitting” other ideas.
Third thing, worst case, if you failed at first, unless you really love what you are doing, you will quit that by itself. Then you will have clear path for new ideas.
Below are some points related to understanding importance of quitting (letting go),
Let you focus better on task at hand.
You will move fast towards your specific goal.
Quality of work will improve.
and Last productivity will be boosted.
Strategic quitting
Strategic quitting — it seems fancy word ha ! It will cover just a method you can use to take decision on dropping or quitting anything. You may already read through years on motivational blogs, or productivity gurus tips the word “priority”.
The same priority you have to consider when decide to choose or quit on something. As I mentioned at the beginning this article isn’t about giving up, it’s about strategic quitting.
You can love many things, may be you love cooking, baking or you love sales and want to start a shoe store or anything related to clothing’s. But what you love to do ? Strategic quitting aligned with long term goals.
Besides priority you can ask below questions to yourself:
Is this moving me closer to my highest-priority outcome?
Does this project still have leverage?
What am I sacrificing by continuing?
So at last, you may have different thoughts and you different way of sticking or dropping the things. But quitting becomes productive when it creates space for something better.