Mindset
Thinking About Quitting? You Should Do This First.
Hammer your stake in the ground.
When I was a kid, I hated sports.
I had no interest in football (much to my Dad’s constant dismay). Didn’t like watching it, could barely play it.
I could barely play hockey either, but my parents “gently” nudged me toward joining the school team anyway.
I played a couple of games. I sucked. I even got knocked out cold once.
So I quit.
Quitting’s easy when you don’t like something.
I’ll bet my bottom dollar (or pound, since I’m in the UK) that you’ve quit multiple things in your lifetime. Sports, music lessons, hobby projects. Maybe even businesses, or writing novels.
Am I wrong?
Reject the easy way out
Quitting is especially easy, too, when you’ve got very little skin in the game.
It’s easy to slip out the proverbial back door in silence with your head down. No big fuss. No feathers ruffled.
But what if you don’t want to quit?
What if you actually do care about the thing you’re doing, you actually do want to stick at it, but you’ve got an unfortunate past history of quitting?
You know that, when the going gets tough, you’ll most likely get going.
So how do you combat that? How do you avoid quitting, and see your thing through to the end?
Josh Spector recently wrote this in one of his super-valuable blog posts:
“When you decide to “do” more, tell people.
Announce you’re going to blog every day, release 10 weekly episodes of a podcast, or whatever you’re setting out to do.
Tell your friends, family, followers, and enemies. Or team up with another creator who’s setting out to do something similar.
Put a stake in the ground you have to live up to — the harder you make it for yourself to quit, the less likely you’ll be to do so.
Accountability works.”
It sure does, Josh.
A goal shared…
If you have a goal in mind and you’re worried you might flake out somewhere along the way, share your plans ahead of time.
Some of those plans could include:
- Writing the first draft of your novel
- Becoming a solopreneur
- Growing your email list
- Getting in shape
- Sleeping better
Either way, if you want to boost your chances of seeing that big (or small) goal fulfilled, tell someone about it.
Write it in a blog post. Record a YouTube video. Share regular updates on social media. Start an accountability WhatsApp group.
At the very least, you’ll probably end up creating some high-value content that others can learn from, even if your plans change along the way.
Grab your hammer
Take Josh’s simple but effective advice.
If you want to avoid quitting, hammer your stake in the ground for all the world to see. Plant your flag. Make abundantly clear exactly what you’re planning to do. Create accountability around your goal.
It’ll incentivize you. It’ll light a fire under your ass. It’ll make it hard to quit when it might otherwise have been easy.
And more often than not, it’ll get you where you want to go.
How do you keep yourself accountable?
Before you go:
