FIGHT TILL THE END OR LET IT GO? It Depends
If we cannot succeed, should we pump our sisu and persevere, or should the negative result inform us that we are moving in the wrong direction?
Here, we can again imagine our 2x2 matrix {2x2 MATRIX} where rows will be causes that should be strived for and those that better be discarded. As columns, we will be either striving or not. As a result, we have four scenarios: two proper—discarding what should be discarded and continuing with what should be. And two improper—throwing good money after bad (stubbornness, sunk cost, etc.) and exiting when we should not (weakness, lack of will, etc.). How can we decide?
In the motivational pulp, you can naturally find support for any viewpoint. Should you fight till the end, no matter what? Oh yes, look at John. He had been digging his father’s estate for 40 years, and finally, he found oil, gas, gold, diamonds, and pearls there. Perseverance always wins. In this narrative, we, of course, forget about Jack, who was doing the same but found nothing but a lonely life and problems with the liver.
In yet another story, we will look at Dick, who was hopping from one job to another, cropping opportunities. Look, he is a big man now! Always be on the outlook for opportunities and get into new fights! Yet, we will not remember Rick, who was doing the same but achieved nothing due to his impulsiveness.
Not only pulp but articles in respectable business journals written from personal experiences are like that.
It is not a sin or conspiracy; in many lifelong endeavors, we can never have a proper study that fixes some parameters while studying others. For instance, we can never have age-, appearance-, and background-matched cohorts of leaders to study a particular type of behavior. As a result, we have an endless supply of theories that might be engaging to read but useless in practice.
We will always have a survivorship bias. Oh, look at the dolphins! They are our good friends, and yesterday, they brought another shipwreck victim ashore. Cuties! Dolphins are cute, but we have no idea how many shipwreck victims they swept into the sea because we will never see those guys.
In the same way, we do not see failures that behaved boldly, humbly, or in any other way but did not succeed in coming into our field of view and becoming interesting as an object of study.
So, where can we mark the difference between stubbornness and perseverance? The most apparent exit criterion is the project’s irrelevance: a similar product has appeared, you have become disinterested in the result, etc.
When unclear, our endpoint tiers and timebox concepts help a lot. Only the aspirational tier can have no exit criteria—the aspiration can be so crucial for you that you will try to reach it as long as you exist. {ENDPOINT TIERS}
Yet, suppose your desired endpoint is not your aspiration. In that case, you must formulate your exit criteria before you start the project to achieve it, i.e., goals and tasks must have exit criteria. You can strengthen it with a time frame, i.e., a timebox, to reach the endpoint or an important milestone that will signal you are working in the right direction. {CHECKPOINT}
It can be, “I will concentrate on it for five (twelve) days (weeks or months) more, and if I do not reach “this,” I will quit.”
Or you decide to deliver the result at a certain point in the future, no matter what. Then, you will use a timebox as a constraint.
If you do not formulate exit criteria, you can get carried away with hopes and one ‘simmon mo’ fallacy.
Formulate them now if you have not done so at the beginning. Formulate them today, five minutes after reading this passage. Consider why you are doing the project. Are there any conditions that make your project irrelevant? Think about the three tiers—aspirations, goals, and tasks.