Give Up
Find renewed purpose through packing it all in.
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Just for a Moment, Give Up
I want you to give up.
Right now. Pack it in, whatever you’re doing right now in your creative endeavours, in your work life, or in that project to take your hobby more seriously.
Stop it.
Stop it, just for the next 5 mins.
Stay with me on this one. I bet after this exercise you will feel a renewed sense of purpose.
Ready? Ok, let’s go.
We’ve all been there
I’ve certainly been there a few times with this newsletter.
It’s those moments where you wonder what’s the point in carrying on with this endeavour. There are so many more important things you could be doing than writing a stupid newsletter post. So many different activities you could be doing that get put to one side. You could do a little more scrolling on your phone or it could be at the expense of more worthwhile activities such as watching cat videos. Or you could be watching Netflix! The draw of endless box sets and binge-watching the latest episodes of Bridgeton.
And then, I managed to snap out of it. Well, I snapped out of it because you’re reading this newsletter post! I carried on. I’m nearly two years into writing this each week so why am I still here writing it?
You can ask the same question of that troublesome project at work or anything tricky in life where you can come up against the mental barrier of “why”.
It’s such an important question.
If we can’t articulate why we are doing something you will have those doubts at 2 am. Your team will have doubts about why they are slogging away at this stupid project when they could be working somewhere else where the purpose is clear and the grass is greener.
So today we are going to quit
This exercise starts by imagining a world where you’ve thrown in the towel. After 2 years of writing this newsletter, it’s over. I’m moving on.
By imagining this world we can flip the problem on its head. We stop thinking about all the thousands of activities we could be doing and focus on what would change if we stopped doing the thing.
Take the project or activity you are struggling with and write it big and bold in the middle of a blank piece of paper.
Draw a line down the middle.
On the left-hand side, you’re going to write or draw the answers to these questions. Try and describe each answer in as much detail as you can. Mind maps can help here (see last week’s post)
What will the world miss out on if you stop the activity?
What will you miss out on personally? Think about skills, experiences, and development opportunities.
Then on the right-hand side, think about what else you could do instead now that you have all this “free time”. This one is considering the opportunity cost of your activity.
What are you now able to do instead that you’ve always wanted to do?
What benefits would this have to your life?
You should now have a balanced view to help your thought process
You’ve thought about what you’d lose by stopping the activity and then you’ve considered all the amazing things you could do by freeing up the time.
The magic happens when you look at the two sides of your paper.
By seeing the potential losses next to what you might want to instead you might start to see that you can achieve some of those dreams by tweaking your activity. Or, you might decide that everything is just ok as it is and you keep going with that renewed feeling that what you’re doing right now is exactly what you should be doing.
For me, this is always a worthwhile exercise when you have doubts about continuing. You go back to your “why” and then course-correct where needed.
Why not give it a try and see how you get on?
What do you think?
Check out these great Substacks
- alternative ways of looking at the world. - helping your mental health. - brilliant writing from a life well traveled. - writing about life and how to live it better. - helping you build your skills to become a better writer.What to read next
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Thank you for reading and see you next week!
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Really great thoughts here. I'm going to have to practice this.
This is really thought-provoking. I just did this with a few projects I'm working on and it helped to validate that I should keep going. Although hard, the thought of giving up on them would be far worse.