This is an interesting article from Fast Company. Especially for those of us schooled with the discipline to always finish what we start.
Some things have to be finished (yes mum, my plate). For instance, one my most intense periods of work was when I had just taken on a demotivated team of 60, who felt that their career development was being ignored. I committed to sitting with each individually to plan out their plan and demonstrate that this was important for me. To have quit after doing 10 or 40, or, god forbid, 59, would have been so wrong on so many levels.
By contrast, a few years later, I started another company. I planned it on the basis of maximising the amount of time it could keep going until it found commercial success. My rationale was to give it as much time to succeed as I could.
In reality it just gave me as much time to not quit as possible.
It never took off, and swallowed up years of my life (and a not inconsiderable amount of my bank balance). Such was my disdain for quitting that I created a plan to keep me going, and kept a failed enterprise on life support much, much longer than I should have.
Bad move. Lesson learned.
We’d all be better off figuring out when to quit, when to ride it out, and when to redouble. Interesting read.
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