#146 | Grit or quit? Just commit

“The best way to guarantee a loss is to quit.” — Morgan Freeman

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” — Margaret Thatcher

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Two books, recently published, tell us to Quit (by Annie Duke) or Grit (by Angela Ducksworth).

Quit and move on, or demonstrate grit: push through the wilderness of uncertainty until you succeed.

The problem with contradictory advice like this is it’s nonsense without proper context. In some situations, it is better to quit early. In others, it's not.

What I see more of, however, is that both options are mulled over, examined and re-examined for far too long. We don't quit or grit:

We wait.

The back-and-forth of indecision achieves nought. We don’t throw ourselves into the project, nor do we move on to the next one.

We fail to commit to either path. And when we don’t commit, we let ourselves down. In a relationship, we confuse everything; at a startup, we pause mid-pivot.

There are very few one-way decisions in life. You can always get another job as a consultant. You can always restart saxaphone lessons. Even getting married is reversible, in a way that having a child is not (albeit marriage is uncomfortable to reverse). Anything that is two-way can be committed to and then reversed.

As a generation, we have boundless opportunities. We can do anything, work from anywhere, and travel inexpensively. We have a gluttony of options. This can be overwhelming.

I recently had lunch with an old friend on a windy Hampstead day. Paper napkins shot across the terrace; we zipped up our coats. He told me that he was at a crossroads. Too much opportunity.

Having always been top of the *fill-in-the-blank* (class, university, grad scheme, department) — an outrageous, charming, achiever — he can do anything. He could start a business, move to the Nordics, become a scuba diving instructor, take a sabbatical, find a new job or just quit his current one. Yet, by not committing to one future, he achieves none of them. He's waiting.

I am hella guilty of barking up random trees, and not committing to climb them. We don't commit because it's cosy knowing we *could* do interesting things rather than finding out, through failure, we can't.

Unpublished books, unreleased albums, unframed art, unhinged relationships. What trees are you fantasising about climbing, but aren't? And why? Let me know!

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My week in books

Any Human Heart by William Boyd. I loved it. This whole-life novel reminds me that life is both long and short, it feels so meaningful in the moment (so damn heavy), but a second later a decade has disappeared, and our kids are adults. We then turn grey. In another second, our grandkids are adults, and then it's over. Life has highs and lows, and we must remember to celebrate the highs - they are joyous and beautiful and desperately finite. Thank you Hector H for the gift.

Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damndest Thing by Jed Mckenna. Interesting read by a dude who claims to be enlightened. A quote:

‘all belief systems are just the stories we create in order to deal with the void. Ego abhors a vacuum, so everybody’s scrambling to create the illusion of something where there’s nothing. Belief systems are simply the devices we use to explain away the unthinkable horror of no-self.’

++ Loved your book recommendations last week. What books have you enjoyed recently?

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Live well,

Hector

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