It’s hard to know when to quit. We’re taught it’s good to challenge yourself and lazy to throw in the towel too quickly. But there’s a big gray area between “easy” and admitting it’s time to move on. How do you pinpoint that spot?
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images Not to brag, but I’m pretty good at sticking with things even when they get hard. Bad relationships, toxic workplaces, demanding sports — I’ve hung on for months and even years longer than I should have, convinced the situation would improve if I refused to give up.
“What you first need to understand is why it can be difficult to give up on goals,” says Dr. Carsten Wrosch, a psychology professor at Concordia University who has researched the effects of goal setting on mental and physical health. He cites a popular psychological theory called the “Rubicon model of action phases,” which hinges on an important life transition — known as the “Rubicon passage” — when we go from considering our options to actively chasing after one of them.
Can you trigger these moments of self-examination before a full-blown action crisis? “It’s a difficult question,” says Wrosch. “People make mistakes with this all the time: They give up too early, or they keep doing something that is futile for too long.” His tip for avoiding this is to get a second — ideally less biased — opinion on the matter. “You could ask people close to you who you trust,” he says.
Duckworth points out that all of us are constantly making tricky choices between going further into familiar territory and backing up and expanding our horizons. This is known as the “exploration-exploitation trade-off” — the classic example is whether a squirrel should keep looking for acorns in the patch he already frequents or ditch it for a new spot that could have more acorns but might have fewer.
This type of stubbornness is normal and human, but it’s also irrational. If an activity or relationship is making you miserable, that’s important information you shouldn’t ignore. “I think it’s revealing to ask, Do I get energy out of doing this? After I do it for an hour or two or three, do I feel more energetic or less energetic?” says Duckworth. “That can be an indication that this is not for you or that there’s something better you could be doing.
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