When Do You Quit?
Knowing when to give up on a project or plan requires both wisdom and courage. How do you decide?
Health care reform legislation is still being debated and the outcome of the eventual vote is getting “iffier’ by the minute. In my home state of Washington, they’re in special session of the legislature because they’d been unable to get agree upon a budget during the regular session. These are two political examples of something we all grapple with personnally: How do you decide when it’s time to throw in the towel?
My dad seemed better at this than I am. Raised during the depression, with the family in dire straights after the death of his father, he was still capable of deciding when something simply wasn’t worth working on any more. He was good with his hands and had a wonderful, practical mind, so it didn’t happen very often. But when it was time, he was wise about pulling the plug. Sometimes it was to just throw the thing out and buy a new one. Sometimes it was to start over with better materials. Sometimes it was to take a different approach to solving the problem that precipitated the effort in the first place.
I need that wisdom. Way too often, I end up piling one bad solution on top of another and making a monstrously ineffective mess of the whole thing. My kitchen is a good example. It needs to be remodeled. The appliances are starting to die. The countertops were chipped and cut up when I moved in six years ago. The flooring was probably worn out long before that, but it’s still there.
This is my year to redo the kitchen. All I really need to do is those three things. Instead, I’ve turned it into a project that makes a lunar launch look simple. I need to quit and go back to basics. I am wasting time now and money eventually if I don’t.
It would be nice if we could get it right and perfect the first time we did anything. But that’s not reality. It takes courage to look at a lot of hard work and decide you have to give up on it. But building onto old bad solutions only worsens the problem. This is true for my life. This is true for my state. This is true for my country. Two wrongs don’t always make a right. Sometimes they just make a bigger mess.
By Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.