Quitting Can Be Good

We are in an age when we are motivated to go, move, start, invent, and climb the ladder.  Whew.  That makes me tired just thinking about.

So, what does quitting have to do with winning and succeeding? 

Consider this.

In my early days as a writer I would often have a meal with one of my college buds.  Harold was an established author by this point, having published over twenty books.  We would talk about my writing and I would eagerly launch into telling him all of the ideas I had for books and of the different books I had begun to sketch out. 

Harold stopped me one night over dinner and said, “Michael, you are spreading yourself too thin.  You need to narrow your focus and work on only one idea at a time and quit the others.”

What?  Quit?  Ouch.  That hurt.  And he was right.  Quitting was the best advice he could have given. 

When we have too many irons in the fire, we lose track of the important, the relevant and the necessary.  Quitting can be good for you.

Herman Wouk used this line in his great novel Winds of War.  He has one of his characters say, “Define your mission.  Define your mission and stick to it.”

That means we quit chasing every dream and idea, and refine our focus on the most important, the one idea that drives us, gets us out of bed each morning and leads us to our bigger, and more important dreams.

You see – quitting can be very good for you.

P Michael Biggs

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