We don't like to quit, especially if we're worried about what others think. We’ll even tell our kids they need to stick with things, like after-hours activities they’re not enjoying, because they need to learn how to ‘commit’.
There’s a happy medium of course. If we stopped putting effort in every time something felt difficult or temporarily unenjoyable, we’d miss out on some of our key experiences and achievements. It’s important to push through hard stuff sometimes, to reach the goal.
But there are times when that matters much less, where sticking with something makes very little sense. Sometimes we stay committed to something to avoid short-term embarrassment, but at the cost of longer-term happiness. Not only do we enslave ourselves to something we’re not finding rewarding, but the time we’re spending eats into time we could spend on something we truly love.
It's easy to fall prey to the sunk-cost fallacy — that we've already put so much time, money, or effort into a goal that it would be a waste to stop pursuing it now. But the energy and money we've put in are gone forever. At the point of re-evaluation, our concern should be whether untapped resources will also be spent unproductively …
In our new course, Who do you want to be when you grow up?, we work through some of the blocks that are in the way of achieving the things on our professional and personal ‘bucket lists’. We look at fear and confidence and tough decisions like when to draw a line and stop doing something to make room for something else.
This is our ‘one wild and precious life’. Our time is far too short to invest in unrewarding activities for the wrong reasons:
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