

The Importance of Abandoning Crap - japaget
http://modernerd.com/post/328572255/the-importance-of-abandoning-crap

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mathgladiator
I completely and whole-heartilly agree. Every time I realize that what I am
working on is going to turn into crap, I move on to something else. The
steaming piles of crap behind me: [http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/10/last-
ten-years-if-i-up...](http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/10/last-ten-years-if-
i-uploaded-it-to.html)

The problem with quiting/failing early is that you have to defend yourself
from others who are unhappy and "stuck it out".

~~~
mitjak
I don't know how far any of those projects went but the descriptions alone
don't sound like crap at all.

~~~
mathgladiator
my comment became too long

[http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/11/escaping-mr-20-and-
los...](http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/11/escaping-mr-20-and-losing-
ego.html)

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akkartik
Seth Godin: _"Quit what you'll never be #1 at."_

is isomorphic to

PG: _"You shouldn't worry about prestige."_
<http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html>

because if you quit what you'll never be #1 at, you'll almost always be left
with something that seems not-serious, a toy, like you're shirking
responsibility.

That's ok. You just haven't made it prestigious yet.

~~~
revorad
It's hard to differentiate from being lazy though. That's what I struggle with
most.

[EDIT] Jeff Bezos said it best: "The thing about inventing is you have to be
both stubborn and flexible. The hard part is figuring out when to be which!"

~~~
akkartik
Yeah, that's hard. Best advice I've encountered is to always quit _to_ a new
project, not just quit without any idea what's next.

So if you don't have any ideas on what's next, keep doing what you're doing.
That's discipline.

~~~
revorad
I agree, I think of it as A/B testing to better ideas. But there's always the
danger of never shipping anything.

~~~
akkartik
A/B testing, that's a good way to think about it, thanks.

Here's another rule of thumb: try to quit at a reasonable milestone. Did you
accomplish something you can put on your resume? Write down what you learned.
Are there any open questions that you could answer with just a few hours or
days of effort? Do you have a story you can tell friends over dinner? All
these are milestones of various magnitudes that you can feel good about to
various extents.

But yeah, in general there's no perfect test.

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jhrobert
As a software developer, until I see something that I consider better, there
is no reason to quit.

Sure, what I consider "better" is subjective.

Yet, what is missing more, "perseverance" or lack of it?

I think that the important thing is actually to love your crap, because you
made it, it is self-expression.

If others don't like it, too bad, but as long as you like it, everything's
just fine, keep going.

~~~
Uhhrrr
>until I see something that I consider better, there is no reason to quit.

You are right, but this article is geared to those who have too much
perseverance, and consequently wind up with a pile of mediocre time sinks
which are unrewarding even to them.

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wccrawford
I totally agree. I've abandoned lots of crap projects from many arts (both
technical and artistic) and almost always went on to start something better. A
few times, I've realized it was a mistake and went back to it.

The problem for me is knowing what is crap and what is not. To an outside
observer, it's a lot easier to decide subjectively, but it's still hard to
tell what the general populace will think.

The only advice I have to offer is: If you're waffling, then it's probably
crap. Truly awesome things really, really shine.

------
johngalt
"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction" -Picasso

~~~
DanielRibeiro
Also:

"The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we
are for what we could become." -Charles Du Bos (it is usually misattributed
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Dubo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Dubois))

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yoak
I see this theme over and over again for businesses and organizations as well.
One of my favorites, Good to Great talks about "Stop Doing" lists. Jack Welch
pushed GE to end the businesses at which it couldn't be number 1 or 2.

In smaller organizations, it is worthwhile to occasionally take stock and
realize the extraordinary number of things that you're doing that you have no
idea why you do them. Most of those have no value.

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yters
Yeah, that's hard for me. Quitting is a virtue I don't tend to have.

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haffi112
Reason I quit using Facebook.

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klbarry
It is so hard to tell what is crap though - often there is such a sharp
tipping point. I can't tell you how many times in my life the golden egg came
from the very last email I sent out, etc. It's super common.

Sometimes I've quit when it was too early. In high school I was selling
chinese mp3 players on a website. I did some marketing of various types and
didn't really know seo yet. I eventually gave up because demand was low. (How
could I compete against ebay, I thought?) Two years later, I checked
analytics, which I didn't know about at the time. It turned out a month or two
after I quit I got tons and tons of traffic but by then I had broken the
navigation - I happened to have an article I wrote rank for "chipod" or
something along those lines which became a popular term later.

~~~
mitjak
That was a lesson in itself though, wasn't it? Perhaps, armed with that
knowledge you can go on to make something much greater and more interesting.
Consider it a lesson in crap quitting.

------
aneth
The difference between persistence and quitting being the right choice is
often a matter of timing, luck, and other subtle unknowable factors. As often
as someone quits one thing to focus on something else, someone else sticks to
their guns and perseveres.

That said, knowing what to quit is probably the rarer skill, since
stubbornness is often easier than moving on. Success is also often the result
of many failures, not the opposite, which indicates quitting and learning is
probably the more important skill as well.

