Quitting Gets an Unfairly Deserved Bad Rap

In a world of rah-rah never quitters, it is hard to be the lone voice of dissent. It is a brute fact that if your objective is to increase enjoyment and happiness in your life quitting is more times than not the smarter move from a time investment perspective when it comes to just about any subset of activities one might pursue.

I decided a long time ago to adopt the philosophy that if I was not at least average to above average at something the very first time I tried it, I would never do that thing again. I applied this across all aspects of my life from sports to hobbies, to intellectual pursuits. You might think that such a position would greatly reduce the number of activities one would ever participate in. Fortunately, I am very good at many things including having a big ego, but you would be correct in any case, because even for someone like me, it does. I joke about the ego thing and anyone that knows me knows that I am humble to a fault. However, this is the writing world and here, I pretend to have a big ego.

Despite all that, it turns out, like most people, I am below average to terrible at many more things than I am good at. This fact used to irritate me, and I would try and try again to master some stupid thing or other just because it pissed me off that I was not good at it right away like I was with most things I tried (see previous sentence for reality check on that contradictory statement). Eventually after much frustration and failing to get any better at said stupid thing, I would give up and move on. Slowly it dawned on me that all the time I wasted trying to get better at that dumb thing could have been better applied to getting even better at some other dumb thing that I was already very good at. I don’t think that I am unique in this as most people probably apply some version of this method in their own lives. That said I do believe that most people are not consciously aware of how much they actually do this and certainly they do not care to question why or to write and publish some stupid story analyzing the shit out of it like I am doing here. The reason they do not do this is almost certainly because they suck at writing and thus have chosen to spend their time doing something they are good at instead, which is a wise choice. Hopefully that thing is reading, and even more hopefully that thing they are reading is something I have written because unlike them, I am very good at writing, and at having a big ego as I mentioned right at the beginning.

Obviously there are some things that even if you suck at them, you must continue to grind away at, mathematics is a classic example for many people. There are of course many others and depending on one’s career and life choices or circumstances many different things you suck at will forced upon you throughout your life. You will have to figure out a work around or muddle through and will be endlessly jealous and frustrated by your friends and colleagues like me who always seem to be so much better at whatever dumb thing it is that you suck at. Not everyone can be as good as I am at most things and for those people I can only say I feel your pain, though not really. However, for those things about which you do have a choice to participate or not, you should not feel guilty about your choice to quit because you suck at that thing. You have made a very smart move in the long run. I mean you have no chance at being as good as me at it so why even bother trying?