There is a famous inspiring poem “Don’t Quit” which we were taught in school. I don’t remember how it started but I still remember the ending paraphrase which was something close to my heart in school years. It goes as below
Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar,
So, stick to the fight when you're hardest hit,
It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.
I took this belief in my adulthood that hard work, perseverance and grit is the recipe of a successful life. Come what may if you work hard enough, persevere enough…you will eventually make a successful life. But do we? In a world filled with advice on setting goals, sticking out to them till the end even when they become redundant, “Quit” asks us to see a realistic approach to everything…even quitting.
Backed with real life stories writer introduces “Quitting” not as a negative concept but a decision-making tool. It sets the case for quitting by various examples, one such story tells us about the Himalayan expedition where one decision to quit made a matter of life and death. It showed even the most experienced people will change their set of hard stop rules to accomplish a task and how difficult it is to quit when getting so close to the goal. While other story shows how a big conglomerate made a quitting decision at a right time and flourished. As any decision-making tool with set of variables, it introduces the concept of “Expected Value” which should be kept in mind when we not only want to Quit but even when we set goals.
Further chapters provide us an insight how quitting is perceived as an emotion and how much stigma world has associated with this word. The impact of taking a decision not to quit affects not only individuals but global businesses. We perceive quitting not only a waste of our time, effort, money but we believe ourselves to be a failure. Making a decision to walk away from something takes courage and is no difficult feat to do so.
Although there were many things, I could relate to from the book but below are my key take aways
Perceive quitting as a positive concept than a negative.
Keep in mind the “Expected Value” from your decisions.
Explore before you are forced to explore.
Keep revaluating your goals after some point in time
Quitting does not make you a failure it opens your eyes to other opportunities.
There are very few books which I return to again and again, now I have one more addition to this list.
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Disclaimer : All opinions on this book are mine own and not affiliated with anyone.
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