When is it ok to give up?

There is an entire section of the self-help industry devoted to motivation for a reason.

Everyone struggles with this at some point. Should we throw in the towel or keep going?  The problem we have when making this decision, a problem that the motivation industry perpetuates, is that we all fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy.

The sunk cost fallacy is the idea that if you quit a project before it is completed the time, energy and money you have already sunk into the project will be lost/thrown away.  This isn’t always true, but most people think way. The problem is that the higher our sunk costs, the costlier it feels like to quit. So we keep going. That’s not necessarily a good thing. Especially if the odds of success are low and you don’t figure into your thinking your future sunk costs.

One of the topics I teach is really based strategy development (see my website humanistlearning.com for a list of courses).  Sunk costs should not be a factor in your decision making.  Here’s why.

Your goal isn’t the project. Your goal is what you hope the project will achieve. Keeping your eye on your real goals will help you recognize when a project isn’t getting you to where you want to go.

For this reason, every 6 months I like to re-evaluate what I am doing and why I am doing it and realign my objectives and my projects. If something isn't working there is a reason for it and often if I step back, I can find a way around it by doing something else.  Often, I can redirect what I was working on into a slightly different project that yields better results. In this way – my sunk costs are no long lost, they are redirected towards more effective methods.

If you are wondering whether you should give up on a project or not. I can’t answer that for you.  It depends on the context and what is at stake. If you aren’t clear about what the stakes are, you will have a very hard time making a good decision. For this reason, I encourage people to think about what it is they value and what sort of impact they want to have on the world.   You can then consider whether your goals (primary, secondary & tertiary) should be realigned.

Let me know if I can help you with this. I have a video streaming on amazon about about how to use your ethical values (primary, secondary and tertiary) to know when to refocus (It's not giving up - it's refocusing) http://amzn.to/2f4jLHy

Life is a lot like poker

Accepting that you have to play the hand you are dealt is half the battle.

I did a podcast a while back on how life is a lot like chess. If you have a strategy and you plan, you can avoid a lot of common problems that afflict us.

My good friend DT Strain, who runs the Spiritual Naturalist Society (check them out here: http://spiritualnaturalistsociety.org/)  wrote me to say that he prefers a poker analogy to life.  Here is what he said.

“Chess seems to offer far more control than life. I prefer poker - yes, you can play your hand well and those who play it better will, on average, do better. But sometimes you just get a cruddy hand and there's nothing you could have done to prevent it. There's a random element and good planning will help mitigate much of it, but not always or perfectly. So, being able to come to terms with that which is out of our control is also important.”

DT is of course correct.  Life isn’t fair and you don’t start out even with everyone else. You have to play the hand that is dealt you and sometimes, you get a cruddy hand and you struggle and even playing a perfect strategic game won’t help you win.  I feel like my husband and I have been struggling with a cruddy hand for the past few years. I console myself by realizing, because of the economy, everyone has a cruddy hand.

Anyway – this random element is super important.  You can only control so much. The rest is random. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.  Driving drunk doesn’t guarantee you will get in an accident. Driving sober doesn’t guarantee that you will not. All your choices do, really, is change the odds in your favor or against you.

That might not seem like much, but over the course of your life, if you can continually shift the odds slightly in your favor you are going to reap more success than if you don’t. And that’s a lot of power when you think about it.