Last month, I wrote about writer’s block, and I glossed over one significant part of my process in recovering from that block. Not because I wanted to keep it a secret, but because I knew once I started, I’d have a blog-length tangent on my hands.
Somewhere in the middle of my explorations, I pondered a question that always scares me a little. I think it scares a lot of people. I asked myself, fundamentally, if I still wanted to write the blog. If maybe, I wouldn’t be happier if I quit.
North American culture is so steeped in this “never give up” ethos, that I think sometimes we forget that quitting is an option, when it comes to our personal goals. (I’m not really talking about quitting less optional things, like your day job, although I honestly think the same thought process is valuable if you’re miserable at work, too.) No matter how much you once wanted to achieve something, you are allowed to quit if your ambition is outweighed by the struggle and difficulty it’s adding to your life. No one should have to carry shame about that.
Photo by Fab Lentz on Unsplash
Furthermore, sometimes, you’re not even quitting on the whole ambition. You’re just quitting a tactic that’s not working for you. You’re prioritizing long-term strategy ahead of a short-term approach that’s too draining to be sustainable. In my case, I was thinking about quitting *this blog* in favor of having more time and energy for my other writing.
To be very clear: I’m not encouraging anybody to quit anything, right now. First of all, because that’s none of my business, and second, because it’s not the actual quitting that I think is important.
I think you can get a lot of value out of considering quitting. Just considering it – thinking about what might happen, what it would do to your goals and your emotional state – can tell you a lot about what you really want, and where you might want to make some adjustments, instead.
While I was burning out in my last career, I had a lot of different conversations with myself about quitting various things, and I started to figure out how to make that process more constructive and less emotionally devastating.
I accidentally developed a process around it, actually, which I used when thinking about quitting my blog.
Step 1: Get Specific.
First, I always think it’s useful to frame the question very specifically, with boundaries on WHAT exactly I’m thinking about quitting, and WHEN. “What if I quit writing blog posts, starting tomorrow?” Being specific about “what” obviously guides the rest of the contemplation, which I’ll get to below. Deciding “when” you might quit is important to give yourself time for contemplation. I recommend “tomorrow” as a decent default, because it guards against two false results: For some people, the idea of quitting “today” feels like jumping into things and might drive too much caution. For others, the exhilaration of just quitting today when you’re already feeling exhausted, or vulnerable or insecure, is too tempting, and drives too little caution. So I start with “tomorrow.” Or maybe “next week,” if I think I need multiple days to sleep on it.
Step 2: Pro-Con
Then, I ask myself what would change in my life if I quit? This usually takes the form of a classic Pro-Con list.
“I’d have more time for other things” is pretty much always going to be on the pro-quitting list. But the opportunities I’d lose out on will be on the Con side. This is where specificity works its magic. What specific opportunities am I losing out on? Are they even things I still care about? And what other things would I do with the time I get back? Are those things that will actually move me closer to my goals, or help me stay healthier?
In my case, the reasons I started this blog still exist. The conversations I want to be part of are still valid. But I also have some non-blog-related things I want to make time for. Seeing those things side by side enabled me to imagine a new, more limited, approach to the blog, if I decided to continue. But before deciding, I had two more things to consider.
Step 3: Think about Other People
I’ve learned to be realistic in how my quitting will affect other people. Obviously, when someone is counting on me to finish something, I need to take that into consideration. But sometimes, I imagine other people judging my action more than they actually do. In this case, I’ve had a fictional blog-reader in my head, judging me harshly every time I missed a self-imposed deadline. (Ironically, that same fictional reader also hated everything I did post, which is telling.)
But in reality, very few real people would be directly affected if I quit. At least right now. Even those of you that subscribe and enjoy my writing have plenty of other things to read. I realized, when I was honest with myself, that any additional effort on the blog would need to be mostly for me. I still hope that the things I write will be helpful to someone else, but that hypothetical person is not a reason to keep doing something that isn’t also helpful for me.
Step 4: Invite your Fear Out in the Open
The biggest thing to consider is always the idea of failure. More specifically, the fear of failure.
I don’t want fear to drive my decision-making, but it’s a sneaky emotion. After all, fear is your way of trying to protect yourself from a bad outcome, and as a complex adult human, you can imagine multiple different kinds of bad outcomes. So to fully consider how fear may be driving your decisions, you have to figure out which outcome your fear is more attached to.
To oversimplify a bit: are you afraid of failing, or afraid of feeling like you failed?
Fear of failing might drive someone to quit proactively. After all, quitting on purpose is a more comfortable internal message than failing.
On the other hand, many of us have a deeply regretful memory of walking away from something we shouldn’t have quit. We failed ourselves BY quitting, and our fear may drive us to keep doing the wrong things just to avoid feeling that way again.
So – how do I figure out which fear is dominating my emotions right now? My strategy for this is to “try on” the idea of quitting, and let my imagination do some work. Sometimes, it’s good enough to simply ask myself, “What if I quit tomorrow? How does that feel?” and my emotions will make themselves known. But if I’m still stuck in my thoughts, I’ll actually try to role-play a little bit. I’ll say it out loud in a safe space (which may or may not include a sympathetic friend), using the same specific phrase I came up with in Step One.
The feelings I have in that moment can tell me a lot. Regret points in one direction, relief points the other. And if I’m still conflicted? Perhaps I haven’t been specific enough. Back to step one.
When I did this last month, I felt conflicted about quitting the blog. But because of the work I’d done in the other steps, I was able to get more specific pretty easily. I tried out, “Starting tomorrow, I will spend no more than 3 hours on the blog in a week and change my goals accordingly.” That was the winner. So here we are.
In this case, considering quitting was a necessary part of continuing to move forward. There have been other times when quitting was absolutely the right decision. It’s never easy to think through, but it’s worth the mental exercise.