The Power of Knowing When to Quit

We see social media posts all the time about how important it is to be consistent and to never give up. We hear stories of elite athletes and CEOs who kept going through the roughest of times. And we think, “This is exactly how I need to be. I need to stick with my goal or dream no matter what.”

But that’s not true for everyone. For some, quitting is the best thing they can do.

Grit on a Spectrum

As defined by Angela Duckworth, grit is our passion and perseverance towards a long-term goal and it’s important (2018). Especially in today’s technology culture where many things are low risk to enter and exit, we need to be training our grit muscle. Today’s youth need to be building grit more than anyone since it’s too easy for them to task switch the moment they’re bored or uncomfortable.

Let’s think of grit as existing on a spectrum where on one end we have someone so gritty that they stick with a dream or goal no matter how hard or how little progress they’re making and on the other end we have someone who lacks grit and gives up on their dream or goal the moment they encounter an obstacle, no matter how easy it is to overcome. Which end of the spectrum needs to learn when and how to quit? Yep, you guessed it. The ones who are closer to the side of going no matter how hard or how little progress they’re making. The “too gritty” people.

How to Know if You’re Too Gritty

In my new book, Helping Your Unmotivated Teen, I cover grit in depth. As I researched it, I found that there can be a downside to being too gritty. If you’re inflexible in your quest to achieve your goal, for example, you might have too much grit. Perhaps you’re so focused on a promotion at your company that you ignore an opportunity for a lateral position at a competing company where the chance to move up is much easier.

You might be too gritty if you find that you won’t give up on a goal simply because of the amount of time and effort you’ve invested so far. Perhaps you’ve already gone through a certification program and spent a good deal of money on it but realize there’s better opportunity and you’d have more passion if you choose a different direction. Because you’re too gritty, you refuse to make the pivot and continue to look for ways to use this new certification while feeling unmotivated and burned out along the way.

When It’s Time to Quit

If you recognize yourself in the above section and think you might be on the “too gritty” end of the spectrum, you’re more likely to feel dissatisfied with your goal, and more likely to experience languishing (the feeling made famous by Adam Grant’s New York Times article in 2021), and more likely to burn out (physically and mentally). And it just might be time to adapt or completely quit the goal causing these symptoms.

• Feeling dissatisfied: You make slight progress towards your goal but don’t feel satisfied with it. You’re not gaining anything from the progress (like better health or feelings of accomplishment or pride) and you may have even stopped tracking it.
• Languishing: It’s not that you’re depressed, you’re just meh. Your goal doesn’t light you up in any way, shape, or form. You’re no longer energized by it and don’t see the point of it anymore.
• Burnout: Burnout has three main symptoms: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and a low sense of personal accomplishment (Maslach and Leiter 2016). Maybe you find yourself feeling one, two, or all three symptoms when you’re working on your dream.

How to Quit

Gritty people often don’t know how to quit. After all, their grit has gotten them far in life and they’re used to persevering through adversities. They rationalize away the dissatisfaction, languishing, and burnout as being part of the process. What they’re often missing, however, is how much further they’d go if they were to quit. When helping my clients decide if it’s time to leave a goal behind, here are some of the things we consider:

• How much time and energy are you giving to this goal? We do a time audit to assess how much time they’re spending on it, how much of the day they’re thinking about it (which means they’re not focusing on other things), and how much work they’re investing in it.
• How do you feel when spending time working towards this goal? Using the time audit tracker, I have them rate how they feel while spending time and energy on it. A simple 1-10 rating scale, where 1 means you feel blah and 10 means total excitement will do.
• What would be different in your days if you were to quit this goal? I walk them through a guided visualization where they imagine if they were to not have this goal in their life at all. I have them imagine their day from waking to bedtime and at the end, I ask them to notice how their body feels. This simple exercise is usually a game-changer for them since many notice how light and excited they feel without it.

Burnout Essential Reads

Why Are Teachers at Greater Risk of Burnout?

An Integrative Approach to Caregiver Burnout

If you decide that quitting is right for you, I encourage you to take your time in refilling that goal space. Give yourself time to explore, imagine, and try different things. Gritty people usually want to rush into the next thing, but I’ve found that when they give themselves the time and space to just explore and imagine, they end up creating incredible new goals and adventures for themselves.

I can’t wait to see what you do.