I’ve recently updated towards being way more decisive on dropping things. (Mostly meant as a memo to self but maybe others will benefit from me writing this. Beware the law of opposite advice)
Often I can tell immediately when something is excellent. The absence of such a feeling = not excellent. And if we follow the principle of “hell yes or no” then I should drop everything that’s not excellent, in order to make space for what is.
In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.
-- Schopenhauer
But in practice there’s a tendency to want to continue with suboptimal things anyway anyway (sunk cost, inertia, FOMO). This is a symptom of scarcity mindset—a cognitive bias.
For individual endeavours, it seems straightforwardly good to have a high bar and “aggressively give up” on things that don’t meet this bar.
Examples of ‘aggressively giving up’ are:
Abandoning a research project that has failed to live up to expectations
Breaking off a relationship that I’m not excited about
Sometimes it’s hard to give up because it makes me feel guilty / induces feelings of shame. But even then it’s not good to bury one’s head in the sand. Much more is gained from being able to detach my self-worth from the project, sit with the reality of ‘this thing I’m doing makes me feel bad’, and seeing what comes from there. (Thanks, therapy)
It’s also hard to give up on endeavours when they include other people. I feel bad about reneging on obligations. Nonetheless it’s probably still good to let people know when things aren’t working out—because it benefits them too. Credit to Habryka’s great post on this topic.
The main counterpoint is if: there’s some expectation that ‘things will get better’, e.g. growing pains, starting out in a new field. That can be a time to instead double down and try to push through. But even then, the feeling of ‘this isn’t working out’ should be attended to. Cate Hall puts it really well:
One could imagine a yin book about agency, called Don’t Just Do Things. It would include topics like: how to attend to the system you’re a part of rather than pursuing your individual agenda, how to be patient until an intuitive solution arises naturally, and how to submit gracefully to the existing forces of change in your life rather than pushing, pushing, pushing. The book’s message would be that the search for an optimal choice, for better, sometimes causes us to foolishly overlook the possibility of skilfully, gently flowing with the momentum of what is already going to happen, of being receptive to our current character rather than trying to change it.
I’ve suffered from trying too hard to change my character. Maybe it’s time to try being receptive to it.
Sometimes it’s hard to give up because it makes me feel guilty / induces feelings of shame. But even then it’s not good to bury one’s head in the sand. Much more is gained from being able to detach my self-worth from the project, sit with the reality of ‘this thing I’m doing makes me feel bad’, and seeing what comes from there. (Thanks, therapy)
Please don’t answer if this is too personal, but in what ways does your self-worth become tied up in the project(s)? Self-Worth is a vague, many sided thing. Are you electing to do things to prove something (to whom? Yourself?)? Or are you like me, have a certain self-view of being “lazy” and thus overcompensate to stubbornly complete things? Or does struggling with something lead to a reassessment of certain virtues or abilities that you previously believed you had: “i.e. I guess if i can’t do this speech, than I’m not as charismatic and charming as I thought I was”
Yes there’s a tendency to be like “if I were really the person I claim to be I would easily succeed at X” and then fail at X and feel sad. It’s a mental trap I fall into pretty often
I’ve recently updated towards being way more decisive on dropping things. (Mostly meant as a memo to self but maybe others will benefit from me writing this. Beware the law of opposite advice)
Often I can tell immediately when something is excellent. The absence of such a feeling = not excellent. And if we follow the principle of “hell yes or no” then I should drop everything that’s not excellent, in order to make space for what is.
But in practice there’s a tendency to want to continue with suboptimal things anyway anyway (sunk cost, inertia, FOMO). This is a symptom of scarcity mindset—a cognitive bias.
For individual endeavours, it seems straightforwardly good to have a high bar and “aggressively give up” on things that don’t meet this bar.
Examples of ‘aggressively giving up’ are:
Abandoning a research project that has failed to live up to expectations
Breaking off a relationship that I’m not excited about
Sometimes it’s hard to give up because it makes me feel guilty / induces feelings of shame. But even then it’s not good to bury one’s head in the sand. Much more is gained from being able to detach my self-worth from the project, sit with the reality of ‘this thing I’m doing makes me feel bad’, and seeing what comes from there. (Thanks, therapy)
It’s also hard to give up on endeavours when they include other people. I feel bad about reneging on obligations. Nonetheless it’s probably still good to let people know when things aren’t working out—because it benefits them too. Credit to Habryka’s great post on this topic.
The main counterpoint is if: there’s some expectation that ‘things will get better’, e.g. growing pains, starting out in a new field. That can be a time to instead double down and try to push through. But even then, the feeling of ‘this isn’t working out’ should be attended to. Cate Hall puts it really well:
I’ve suffered from trying too hard to change my character. Maybe it’s time to try being receptive to it.
Please don’t answer if this is too personal, but in what ways does your self-worth become tied up in the project(s)? Self-Worth is a vague, many sided thing. Are you electing to do things to prove something (to whom? Yourself?)? Or are you like me, have a certain self-view of being “lazy” and thus overcompensate to stubbornly complete things? Or does struggling with something lead to a reassessment of certain virtues or abilities that you previously believed you had: “i.e. I guess if i can’t do this speech, than I’m not as charismatic and charming as I thought I was”
Yes there’s a tendency to be like “if I were really the person I claim to be I would easily succeed at X” and then fail at X and feel sad. It’s a mental trap I fall into pretty often