How to Be a Quitter
By: Wang Yip
Tags: Writing Tips, Quitting, Writing, Writing Habit, Jon Acuff

How to Be a Quitter

What I learned from Jon Acuff about quitting and why it is good to be a quitter (when writing)

Photo by Romain V on Unsplash

I’m not a quitter. From my early childhood memories, I remember if my Mom or Dad asked me to do something, I would not quit until it was done. Being persistent, having grit, getting over the dip — these are all things successful people do.

So it surprised me when I heard the idea that successful people have all quit. It makes sense. To be successful in one area of your life, you have to ‘quit’ other areas that are taking away your time and energy from being the best. In management consulting, I noticed a lot of partners (the big bosses) who had divorced from their spouses. No idea if it was because of the work, if it was a coincidence, or what, but management consulting has long hours and sometimes intense travel and this may not be what the spouse originally signed up for in the relationship.

Jon Acuff wrote a book called Quitter: Closing the gap between your Day Job and your Dream Job. It’s not quite about quitting, but I did learn a few things and thought about how it applied to writing:

Most people want things to be perfect

Would you rather not complete something and leave it at 0% complete? Or would you rather start something and have it 50% complete? Most people would rather not start it if they can’t complete it.

The takeaway for writing: How do you get out of this mindset, especially for writing? If you are starting out and struggling to find ideas to write about (maybe you are ‘blocked’), it is because you are not writing enough poor material. You want to write something ‘good’, but because you cannot come up with a good idea, you do not want to write. Everybody who has had success in writing has also had a lot of bad writing. It’s part of any creative job to come up with a lot of awful stuff.

Cut your goal in half

Do you want to lose 10 pounds? Cut it in half. Why? Imagine that you lost 8 pounds in 2 months. You did not reach your 10-pound goal and you would feel you failed. Cutting your goal in half is another way of really saying that you should create the smallest goals for yourself in order to accomplish them easily and then use that momentum and motivation from reaching your first few set of goals to create more ambitious goals. What is a great way to practice this?

Take B.J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits course — it’s free, and it teaches you this exact idea — set a super tiny goal, reward yourself, and then use that as a starting point to build bigger habits. For example, if you want to get into the habit of flossing your teeth, floss one tooth. Even if you floss no more teeth aside from that one tooth, you have accomplished your goal and celebrate (though chances are, you will feel like flossing more teeth).

In writing, it means setting smaller writing goals. If one thousand words a day feels like a struggle to you, set your goal to be 100 words a day. Or if even that is too much, set it at two sentences a day. The idea is to write every day, no matter the word count, and to build the identity of yourself as a writer.

Choosing to fail at certain things

We all know that we cannot multi-task and we also know that if we divide our focus on too many things, we are just not going to have enough time, energy, or focus to achieve everything. The implication of this is that we can and should choose to ‘fail’ at specific things that we work on. Maybe you feel that you cannot be a husband, a father, and an entrepreneur all at once. This does not mean that you should choose to be a terrible father but maybe in order to run your business, drop your kids off with your parents or daycare so you have the time to work on your business. If you haven’t already, it may also mean that you watch less television or avoid social media, so you have the time to do other things.

The takeaway for writing: In writing, I see the idea of experimenting with certain topics. When you are starting out as a writer, you may not know where your ‘niche’ or area of expertise is. Experiment with different topics and expect each one to fail (or at least do not expect to go viral with every article you write) — then you will be pleasantly surprised when something hits.

Make it fun

I like this concept a lot, and I think Gretchen Rubin describes a similar concept, though not quite in Jon’s words that summarizes this nicely. It’s the concept of pairing fun things with not so fun things to motivate yourself to get things done. When you don’t really want to exercise in the morning but know that that is the only time you can watch Game of Thrones is when you are on the treadmill, you are going to complete the run in the morning. When you do not really want to do the dishes or the laundry but have an exciting podcast to listen to while doing so, you’re going to have clean dishes and fresh smelling clothing. Pair up the fun things with your not so fun things and watch yourself get more things done.

The takeaway for writing: Do you have a favorite snack you like eating? Or you have a favourite TV show or movie you like watching? Reward yourself at the end of your writing session with something you enjoy. Use the reward to motivate yourself to write.

Secret rules to accomplish more things

Jon shares a fantastic story about when Will Smith first moved to LA to break into the movie industry. His manager asked him what goal he wanted to set for himself and Will replied “I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.” Remember, this was before Will became a huge mainstream rapper and even further before he became a blockbuster actor. His manager did some research and looked at the ten top grossing movies of all time to understand if there are patterns. They both realized that 10 / 10 of the movies had special effects. 9 / 10 had special effects with creatures. 8 / 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story.

Now look at Will’s six most successful movies:

Independence Day — special effects, creatures, love story

Suicide Squad — special effects, creatures, love story

Hancock — special effects

Men in Black 3 — special effects, creatures, love story

Men in Black — special effects, creatures, love story

I am Legend — special effects, creatures

Find someone with an amazing diploma and then borrow it for yourself.

The takeaway for writing: Which writers do you admire? Tim Denning? Tom Kuegler? Ayodeji Awosika? I’m not saying to copy their ideas, but read carefully through their popular articles and identify the elements you can steal for your articles. Are they well-researched? Full of quotes? Formatted well? Anecdotes? Interviews?

Use data to help motivate you

If you were trying to improve your running, if you went from running 3 miles/hour to 4 miles/hour, you would improve your 20-minute mile to a 15-minute mile. That’s quite significant. However, if you ran 8 miles/hour and increased it to 9 miles/hour, you improve your mile time by 40 seconds. I know right? It’s not a lot, and it seems insignificant (and it also amazes me when people tell me how quickly they run marathons or half marathons because even a small amount of time shaved off can be significant knowing that fact). My point is you can use data to motivate you and show the progress that you are making because when you do not have the data, progress may not be visible to you. I’d also point out, as Scott Adams did in his book “How to fail at everything and still win big” that systems are superior to goals — rather than trying to lose 10 pounds, my system is to eat healthily (say at least 3 servings of vegetables every meal) and be active (exercise 3 times a week for 30 minutes or fewer). The way you set your goals can help you achieve them as you can see.

The takeaway for writing: I was pleasantly surprised to see an email from Grammarly, a free tool that checks your spelling and grammar. The email told me I had written over 45,000 words and gave me several stats on how my writing compares to other writers, the tones I used in my writing, and how my spelling and grammar compare to others. I don’t care about any of the stats, other than the 45,000 words — I want to make sure I am writing every day and the email is a glorious reminder that even a bit every day can add up.