I don’t like quitting. My school motto growing up was Latin for “I will find a way or make one.” Honestly, I think that was my motto before I ever got to that school.
I almost never quit reaching for the outcomes that matter to me. But I quit strategies all the time.
That distinction took me years to understand clearly, and I think it’s one of the most useful things I can offer you. Because the leaders I see struggling most are not the ones who quit too easily. They are the ones who cannot tell the difference between the goal and the path they chose to reach it. They hold on to a failing approach because abandoning it feels like abandoning everything. Or they give up on the outcome entirely because they can’t imagine a different route. Both are unnecessary. Both are costly.
When I started college, I wanted to help people — as a physician. I loved organic chemistry. I was less enthusiastic about physics. But more than that, I started to see that my particular strengths — analysis, communication, the ability to understand a system and move people inside it — could help more people in a different way than medicine would. I didn’t quit wanting to help people. I quit the strategy I’d assumed was the only way to do it. What followed was a career I couldn’t have designed from where I stood at eighteen.
I started a book six years ago. The structure has changed. The plan has evolved. Chapters that seemed essential got cut. A title changed. The whole organizing philosophy sharpened over time into something I couldn’t see at the beginning. I didn’t quit the book. I quit versions of it that weren’t working, usually when I knew in my gut they weren’t working but had been holding on anyway.
A few years ago, I ran for the Virginia House of Delegates. One of the reasons I ran was Medicaid expansion — hundreds of thousands of Virginians without healthcare coverage, a solution sitting right there, and a legislature that wouldn’t move. I wanted to win, get to work, and help make it happen.
I didn’t win.
I also didn’t quit. I went on to chair Virginia’s List, a political action committee dedicated to electing Democratic pro-choice women to the General Assembly. Two years later, with our help, Virginia elected eleven Democratic women — and four men — to seats that had been held by others. Those legislators, along with their colleagues, led Virginia to expand Medicaid in 2019.
I didn’t get to cast a vote for it. But it happened. The outcome I cared about happened. I just had to quit the strategy I’d assumed was the only way to reach it and find a different one.
That’s the whole game, sometimes.
That’s the tell, by the way. You usually know before you’re willing to admit it.
Here are the questions I ask when I’m trying to figure out whether something is worth quitting:
Is it the outcome I’m attached to, or the approach? If someone handed me the outcome tomorrow through a completely different path, would I take it? If yes, the approach is worth reconsidering.
Am I holding on because it’s working or because I’ve already invested in it? Sunk cost is a trap. The time and energy already spent isn’t a case for more investment. It doesn’t change what’s in front of you now.
What would I tell a colleague who described this situation to me? We are almost always clearer about other people’s stuck places than our own. Borrow your own advice.
Is quitting this strategy opening a door or closing one? The best quits I’ve made created room for something I couldn’t see while I was busy with the thing that wasn’t working.
None of this is permission to bail at the first sign of difficulty. Persistence is real and it matters. But persistence applied to the wrong strategy is just an elegant way of staying stuck.
Find a way or make one. The way you imagined is not always the one that works. Make a different one.
Julie
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