

Winners Never Quit? Well, Yes, They Do - bootload
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/business/16shortcuts.html?ref=business

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KevBurnsJr
<http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/>

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wallflower
I'm a believer in stubbornness and shelving projects. I never actually quit
something; Nearing the point of burnout and/or boredom with a hobby or
project, I just put it on the back burner and let it simmer and resume it
later.

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wheels
Why? That just seems like a way to accumulate baggage. It seems more efficient
to admit failure and move on.

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wallflower
I think my definition of project varies from yours. For instance, battling my
shyness and/or my tendency to be a wallflower are my life-long projects.
Individual experiences are softened as failures, the more it occurs. And I'm
the first to say, I avoid failure.

It's easy to feel like giving up after asking a really good dancer to Salsa
dance and having a brain freeze and reverting to the basic step and/or seeing
her give you a bored look while doing basic moves, but I really intend to
become a really good dancer. It's easy to feel like turning down an invitation
to go out after a long week (but accept all invitations) and its good to put
yourself into uncomfortable social situations (sometimes).

"Success is the process of living your life working toward worthy goals. And
here is the brain tweak: once you reach your goals, you are no longer a
success! You must set new goals!"

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babul
Be it sports, education, startups, or life, the pattern is similar.

Move fast. Develop iteratively. Fail quickly. Learn. Rinse. Repeat. Over time
you will improve and be able to remove the fail quickly step. Since knowing
when to quit is hard, removing this step based on non-achievement of realistic
and measurable goals/milestones seems to work for most cases.

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DaniFong
It's frightening how bland this is. History is absolutely full of tales where
heroes, having given up on one path through life, find themselves blazing
another. Redemption is one of the greatest emotional force we have. I hoped
for a lot out of this article, and all I find is... a correlation with
C-reactive protein?!

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sutro
Funny concept: frightening blandness. Trying to imagine something both
frightening and bland the only thing that comes to mind is our current
president.

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hugh
Please, no politics. If I wanted to read a forum where every thread was used
as an excuse for off-topic Bush-bashing I'd read.... well, pretty much any
other forum in existence.

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ad
I was reminded of this quote:

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use
being a damn fool about it." \--W.C. Fields

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wheels
Nice article -- I think the first thing one would tend to apply it to in a
startup context is a startup as a whole, but I believe in a successful startup
quitting often, and at the right time is critically important. It seems
foregone when going into something new that your assumptions will be wrong a
lot of the time. Figuring out when to give up on some strategy, despite having
invested time in it and go to try the ones that are working seems to be one of
the rules of engagement.

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ComputerGuru
Yeah, because Edison gave up after a couple hundred failures. That's why it's
so dark in here.

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daniel-cussen
Yeah, good point. What I guess this boils down to is, if quitting is the right
decision, quit. If it's the wrong decision, don't quit. Don't rule it out, and
in general, try to make the right decisions. Not super enligtening.

