December 30, 2009 117 Comments

Never Give Up- No, Give Up

dog fights I see this phrase a lot: “never give up.” People utter it as a kind of bravado, a kind of challenge to say that you have to persist to succeed. The problem is, the thinking is flawed. There are PLENTY of times when one should give up. I see them every day. Every day.

Mister Seth Godin schooled me personally HARD in The Dip. If you didn’t buy that book, do so. And read it. It’s like… a half hour of reading. It’s tiny and yet so powerful.

There is a right time to give up. There’s a right time to quit. The trick, and it is a HUGE trick, is knowing which is which.

In the new book that Julien and I are working on, that’s something we’ll talk about. We’ve both come to realize that by experimenting frequently, often privately, and iterating on our failures, we’ve come out ahead faster than not. But in that, we’ve learned when to give up. We’ve learned when to kill something that’s not working.

I urge you to think about this long and hard. As the year is coming to an end, review your efforts of the last year frankly. Ask yourself where it worked. Ask yourself where it wasn’t really all that successful. And determine what you’re going to do next. But do, in fact, think about when it might be time to give up, and then try something else.

One Last Thing

Remember that surrender is every bit as much a part of strategy as victory. Learning when to surrender or lose a smaller battle has been part of the success plan of every major war ever fought. The trick is in knowing what really matters, and never letting go of that. The problem we have is that we fall into the trenches and think the battle is the war.

Never give up? Hell. Give up all the time. Just keep your eyes on the real prize, what really matters, and don’t let that go.

Photo credit Beverly & Pack

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  • Neusa Saranga

    I totally agree. Failure to recognize when to give up, can led to greater loss and can push one further away from Victory. We often are afraid to give up, we are afraid to face the unknown, oblivious of the realization that there may lie our greatest glory. Most hold on to the phrase “Better the devil we know than the devil we dont”. Fantastic article. I am learning to master the ability of distinguishing when its time to give up and when I owe it to myself to keep going.

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    I have given up credit cards–actually fairly easy to do, since the companies have gotten so very greedy and hard to deal with. Pretty soon, will have them all paid off, and I already have more in my bank account!Thats just ridiculous. Off the stage a performer is just like you and me, besides being wealthy and famous. They have a life outside of performing, let em live it without bothering them. Thats the only reason why i would not like to be famous.

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    There is also a separate group called “never get started” – folks who talk for years about getting something going . . . and never do. I was one – for 20 years. I am now acting on everything – even if only in some small way.

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