How Do You Know When It’s Time to Quit?

Carlos left a great software engineering job because he thought he wanted to become a lawyer. But after the first year of law school, he realized it wasn’t at all what he anticipated. He asked himself: should he quit now and go back to tech? Or keep studying law — given the time and money he’d spent on classes —and risk going even further down the wrong path?

The sunk cost fallacy may be at work here. It describes a person’s reluctance to abandon a course of action because they’ve invested heavily in it, even when it’s clear that quitting would be more beneficial, according to the Cambridge Dictionary.

People tend to focus on the fact that the price they’ve already paid can’t be recovered, but experts recommend thinking about the opportunity cost of continuing with a job or a project. “Every minute, dollar, and thought we spend wishing for an outcome in something that's not working out is a minute, dollar, and thought we can’t spend on something of potentially greater value,” says Sean Carney, a career coach at Korn Ferry Advance.

Here’s how to know when to bail out of a pursuit, and how to recover.

Try to be as rational as possible.

“There’s never a great time to let go of a passion project,” Carney says. Tough decisions like this often pull your emotions in several directions. Instead of being guided by guilt, regret, or self-judgment, look at as many data points as possible to decide when it’s time to quit. If it helps, speak with a career coach or trusted advisor to gain clarity.

Tie up the loose ends.

In many cases, you won’t be the only one affected by a much-hyped project going south. If the data is telling you that you need to stop progress on a project, don’t just drop it cold turkey. Sit down with the team to do a retrospective: look for the learning opportunities, give recognition to those who took risks, and be completely transparent with the next steps. “Keeping up appearances is the wrong move and ultimately worse for morale,” Carney says.

 Reflect on why it didn’t work, and pivot.

When we experience a failure of any kind, it's important to reflect on what went well and what we would do differently next time. But it’s not healthy to dwell on what went wrong. Remember the idea of opportunity cost: time spent looking backward is essentially more time spent on the failed project. To maintain the energy and momentum of pursuing a goal you care about, experts suggest taking what you learned and moving forward with your next pursuit as quickly as possible.

 Redefine failure.

A failure is only a failure when we fail to learn from the event. “Failure is actually a leading indicator that you’re challenging yourself enough, innovating enough, and trying enough new things,” Carney says.

It’s hard when a project or goal doesn’t go as planned, but the best way to honor your effort is to give yourself credit for taking the risk —something most people won’t do. So keep challenging yourself and taking risks. Identify the lessons from this experience and apply them in your next pursuit.