Blog

People often post things to Pinterest that are supposed to be inspirational and uplifting.  [1]

For example, today, on Pinterest, I "learned" the following:

"One thing is for sure:  If you give up too soon, you'll never know what you're missing.  Keep going and NEVER quit."

Sounds good I guess.  Quitters never win, right?

Except, in my experience, it's wrong.  We need to start using our brains to deeply think about the things we see online and stop letting "sound bites" guide us.

Earlier in life, I had what most people I knew considered a "good" setup: a decent job with decent money.  I wasn't happy though, and had some ideas to do something more fulfilling.  Many people told me to to "never quit."  But, eventually, I did quit and now I'm a million times happier,  I left behind a negative environment, I now set my own schedule, I travel several weeks a year, and I do the work I want to do while making a good income. [2]

I find that the most successful people quit all the time.  In fact, in the Silicon Valley, tech/geek world, we have a saying:  "fail early and fail often."  It's one of the few places in business where there is very little negative stigma attached to failure.  And that's a major reason why tech is one of the industries where, even in this economy,  people are still happy and building successful businesses.

In fact, being willing to quit things is a virtue of sorts and can be an indicator of how creative and successful one becomes.

That's because quitting something in one area, creates opportunity in other areas.  As a small example:  I've noticed that every time the power goes out or the internet fails that I can't get my regular work done.  I can't check Facebook or Twitter, and I can't program. 

So, when that happens, I quit what I'm doing and pick up my guitar.  My guitar playing has gotten better.  So now, when I'm worried or struggling with something.  I quit worrying and play guitar.  Guess what?  My guitar playing has gotten really good.  And my mind usually comes up with a more elegant solution than if I had simply powered through the problem.

At BoldBrush, we've quit all kinds of things over the past few years:

We once started a "Digg clone" focused on art, but the demand never materialized, so we quit. [3]

One of the website categories we created early on was a journals page.  Nobody used it, so we quit developing it.

Canvoo started as a Squidoo clone, then we tried it as something else, and have tried approx 5 different ideas under the name "Canvoo." But they've all failed to get traction, so we quit to focus those resources in better ways.

You see, like I said, quitting something in one area, creates opportunity in other areas.  Our journal feature and Canvoo didn't work as we planned, but we iterated on those ideas and have developed the core ideas into new exciting things at FASO that have worked for our customers. Many of our successful ideas began life inside the things that we quit.

And those are just the business things.

Here are a whole bunch of other things I've quit in the past ten years:

* Watching Television.  I'm not a fanatic, there's just nothing good on anymore. [4]

* I quit worrying about politics.  Who cares?

* I quit checking email obsessively.

* I quite making excuses and just work out everyday.  I consider it something I have to do, just like brushing my teeth. [5]

* I regularly quit doing all paperwork, although eventually I have to catch up.  But I never stop during a creative moment to do paperwork.

* I quit trying to force relationships that were emotionally draining.

* I quit trying to follow "best practices" in SEO

Remember what I said about my guitar playing?  What if you quit watching TV, worrying about politics, checking your email, doing paperwork, sustaining draining relationships, playing on Facebook and other sites....and just....painted...instead?  I think you know the answer to that question.

The answer is, your art would get so good they can't ignore you.  

Truly, quitters do win.  At least, strategic quitters win.  So I say, give up lots of stuff.  And when you've given up almost everything unnecessary, listen closely to your heart.  You won't just sit on the sofa and do nothing, you will have some burning desire.  

And that burning desire is what you should be doing.

Sincerely,

Clint Watson

-----------------------

Footnotes:

[1] I find it ironic that a large chunk of Pinterest posts are just images of inspirational text.  If you're going to just post text, why not just tweet it or post it to Facebook?

[2] By "good" I mean that I have enough to live the lifestyle that I want, and not worry too much about making ends meet.  Fortunately, the lifestyle I want is pretty modest.  In most people's book, that's freedom.

[3]  It was called Brushbuzz, we pivoted to a model where we curated the submissions ourselves, and eventually dropped the idea.

[4] Except Modern Family.

[5] After meticulously analyzing virtually every aspect of his digital life since 1989, Stephen Wolfram noticed something: “The more routine I can make the basic practical aspects of my life, the more I am able to be energetic — and spontaneous — about intellectual and other things.”  That captures the idea behind why I quit thinking about working out and just made it routine.