It's ok to quit
While last week I wrote about how refusing to quit is the path to success, I believe it’s ok, and even smart, to quit certain things. While it can be tough to do so, this is a mentality I’m working on adopting in 2025.
Something I’ve come to realize is that not all things you start will continue to serve you. Regardless of whether or not you find success in something, sometimes your interests, focus, or priorities change and that’s not a bad thing.
Especially for things you do for extended periods, it’s common for your relationship with that thing to change. How you interact with that priority, hobby, platform, or responsibility in year one versus year five might evolve into something different and should almost be expected since there’s a good chance that you and your goals are different when comparing you today to you sometimes in the distant past. To me, this is one of the many reasons why creators pivot or evolve their content over time — what they used to do no longer serves them in the same way so they change.
While it’s easy to focus on the negatives associated with quitting there’s a flipside which is discussed less often. Quitting something, for the right reasons, frees up your time to invest in other ventures and gets you closer to pursuing the “right” things.
For myself, I spent time growing platforms like YouTube, X, LinkedIn, this newsletter, and more which inevitably has diluted my focus. This is not to say I’m “too busy” to keep up with each of these, but more so to remind myself that my own time and attention are limited and it’s important to allocate these resources carefully.
While I don’t currently plan on quitting any of these, I aim to be less afraid to pivot my content into something that better serves me and my interests at the current time. But, if any of these stop serving me, I shouldn’t be afraid of walking away from it and pursuing something different. This reminds me that “You have to be the fool to be the savior”. In years past, especially when starting something new, I was never afraid to make mistakes or look foolish. Inevitably, any success I’ve had can be attributed to first being a fool at that very thing.
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I like how you reframe quitting to shifting your energy to something else. People are quick to label a quitter as someone who gave up. But sometimes, they just made a choice to pursue something different. We all do this in life. And there’s nothing wrong with it.