In my small-town high school in South Carolina, there was an English teacher who was famous for one lesson she gave every year on cliches and aphorisms. She delivered that lesson exactly the same way every year, which is how it became famous. 

She was a small person, but she got up on her elbows on her old wooden podium to look down on the class. She fixed the kids with a steely gaze, and said, “Hesitate and you will be lost! But! Look before you leap!” 

On the kids’ end, the expected response was unclear. Which made the moment awkward, year in and year out. 

Some boy, trying to be funny, would say, “Whoa.” 

“Well, you got me. You win. The world is dark and mysterious,” my friend Amy said in the hall after class. (Amy and I listened to The Smiths a lot.)

I think of this English teacher when I think about conventional wisdom and mixed messages. We have a lot of them, when it comes to productivity and hard work.

“Winners never quit, and quitters never win,” say old-school sports coaches everywhere, including in that small-town high school.

“Pick your battles,”  say friends who don’t want to see us get burned in interpersonal conflict, or wear ourselves out.

There are hundreds of inspirational quotes about NOT quitting. Google for them if you dare. I did and it made me feel like a lazy loser instead of inspired.

I did find one I like, from leadership personality Steven Bartlett: “Contrary to popular opinion, quitting is for winners. Knowing when to quit, change direction, … is a very important skill.”

As I write this, the end of the year is coming up fast. As you consider new year resolutions or new year goals or new year intentions, I recommend you also take time to think about quitting. 

What do you want to stop doing, or stop putting pressure on yourself to start doing, to give you a clear path and focused mind for what you do want to do? 

This is an exercise in prioritizing and letting go. This is make-room quitting. I’m thinking about specific commitments, projects, even relationships with people, that aren’t working out. 

What I’m not talking about here necessarily is quitting your whole entire job. But that’s the move to make sometimes. If you’re at that point, let me know! I have one piece of “before you quit your job” advice that might be worth hearing. If one or two people ask for it, I’ll write about it for everybody. 

(I’m also not talking about “quiet quitting,” the trendy but ill-defined term that I hope will go away in 2023. “Quiet quitting” and all the worry about it is just another excuse for bosses to be suspicious of employees. Not helpful.)

What does this quitting for the right reasons look like? 

I have two current examples, in two people I am coaching right now. They inspired this topic. They showed me how quitting something can be a strength, and a sign of personal growth. 

The first person decided to quit a leadership program for which I am one of many faculty. She said it was a difficult decision, and very hard to make. But she feels really good about it, in that never-look-back way that indicates a good decision. “As soon as I did it, I knew it was the right thing for me.” She immediately felt more hopeful about her other goals and career priorities. Quitting this program that she had really enjoyed and benefited from gave her such obvious joy. 

I congratulated her on quitting!

The other coaching client who shared a quitting story with me this week is a manager who is ready to move up a level in seniority in her organization. She quit waiting on her boss to support a new initiative she was leading. For a couple of months, we have been talking about what she could do to get the logistical support and resources she needs. This week, she made a decision: She was moving on other projects that are more closely tied to her boss's immediate priorities (which have changed over the past few months). “I feel so much better. That didn’t feel like me,” she said, about the feeling of waiting and waiting and getting annoyed with her boss. 

What both of these women had that allowed them to quit with confidence was a clear idea of what else they wanted to focus on. 

That’s the other part we need to quit with confidence, the thing we want to do more of. (“Relax” counts as something to focus on. It doesn’t have to be just other work and projects and learning goals.)

What do you need?

What do you want?

What do you want to learn?
How do you want to grow?

Two things I have quit in recent years, and the priorities I replaced them with: 

• Membership on the board of directors for a local literary non-profit. Because being on the board gave me less time to participate in the organization’s creative storytelling shows and coaching. I stepped up from that fun creative activity to be on the board, only to quit doing the things that made me love the organization so much. I am now back to that.

• Certain kinds of consulting work. I need to be careful here, because I still do consulting and need some consulting business. But I did decide to quit some types of consulting work, to make room for my leadership courses and do leadership coaching.

What about you? 
Anything you want to quit, to make room for what’s important to you now?