Which Is Better Advice, Never Give Up, or It’s Okay to Quit?
As the great Winston Churchill said, “Never, never, never give up!” But what about learning from your mistakes?
As the great Winston Churchill said, “Never, never, never give up!”
A lot of people take this to mean that once they set their mind on something, they should keep going. Come hell or high water, they will struggle to achieve that goal.
History is full of stories of people who continued long past the point where any sane person would have. People point to these stories and say, “See? This is what you can accomplish if you don’t give up.”
Of course, history is also full of stories of people who have switched courses.
Those people turned failure into success by learning from their mistakes. If they’d continued struggling at their initial goal, they’d have died as failures.
So which advice should you follow? Both? Neither?
How do you know when to quit and when to never give up?
Are the two pieces of advice contradictory?
Let’s take a look at what these pieces of advice are actually saying.
Never give up.
This means, no matter how many times you get knocked down, you get back up again. You try to find a way forward.
If you can’t go forward, you try to go over, around, or under whatever is in your way. There is always a goal that you are moving towards.
You are always learning, growing, and bettering yourself.
This is 100% true.
It’s okay to quit.
That means, you’ve realistically looked at a situation. You’ve determined the amount of time/effort/resources to accomplish something.
That cost is much less than the payoff you’d get from it.
In business, you can close product lines. In your personal life you can decide you’re done with a particular hobby/sport/activity.
This is also 100% true.
Wait, what? How can they both be true?
Look at some examples
If you’re starting a business, and you just aren’t getting traction with your idea, you pivot. You find another idea that you can run with.
IBM originally manufactured cheese slicers and time clocks. They quit manufacturing those things. They never gave up.
Michael Jordan is arguably the best basketball player ever. He left basketball to play baseball for a while. He didn’t like it as much as basketball, so he came back to basketball.
He quit basketball. He quit baseball. He never gave up on improving himself as an athlete and challenging his capabilities.
There are plenty of people who learn how to play a musical instrument. They take lessons and practice until they’re able to play their favorite songs. At that point, they quit practicing and learning.
They have no interest in becoming professional musicians. They’ve reached the level where any further development costs more than the reward they’d get from it.
Maybe they take up a different instrument. Maybe they start an entirely different hobby. They quit developing one hobby, but they don’t give up.
Conclusion
“Never give up” does not mean “Never give up trying to achieve one specific goal”.
That would actually be pretty stupid advice.
Instead, always be making forward progress toward some goal. Keep at it for as long as the effort pays off (or seems likely to pay off).
That means, if you have a world-changing idea that will be of huge benefit, you can keep at it for decades.
If the cost of pursuing the goal outweighs the benefit of achieving the goal, quit and find a new goal.
Ready to have a better tomorrow?
I’ve created a cheat sheet to help you increase your confidence and get control of your life. If you follow this daily, you will level up your life very quickly!
