The Toxic Reality of "Commit or Quit"

commit or quit I absolutely hate that saying. Not because of the meaning behind it, but because of the way that people tend to interpret it. And this, when I explain this to especially my younger students who are in high school and university, It's often the first time they've ever seen it from this point of view. And even in the professionals that I work with that are older in their twenties and thirties.

It's often something that just completely changes the way that they view how they've been tackling issues. And uh it's a huge face palm moment when they think back to all the different conflicts and issues that they could have overcome a different way. So, super important topic. Let's cue that info music.

So commit or quit. Commital quit. What's the problem with committed quick? I don't disagree with the idea that at at this at a certain point, ultimately, when you really simplify a problem, it comes down to commit or quit. I really do think And this goes back to, you know, even like Camus, uh, the philosopher, who just talks about the idea that, well, look.

In the grand scheme of the universe, let's just let's say you know you're let's take the religious aspect out of this and you know and the purpose of life and just think okay, what is the meaning of life? Blah blah blah. Okay, at a universal cosmic level, how much difference does your action and your life make? Actually made

realistically, probably not a hell of a lot. So if if nothing really truly has a point, like if you know, climate change, global warming, all of that stuff, I mean like I'm again as realistically like, you know, just round the corner. But, you know, e even if the human race were to go completely extinct, how much difference does it really truly make, even for our planet, you know? Give it a hundred thousand years and like all traces of humanity will probably be gone.

So it's kind of like a little bit arbitrary, you know, like our own individual lives. Having said that, does that mean that you should just um, you know, give up. Well, that's the thing, is that, you know, if it's ultimately futile, you either make the choice, well, you're gonna either f make your own purpose and just, you know, do whatever makes you uh it enjoyable

And just accept that life is, you know, full of uncertainty and that's just the way that life is and just can just keep living and and find happiness anyway. Or you just die. Right? Or just die. Right. So that's kind of the situation as well, is that at you know, if there's something that you want to commit to and you want to achieve, well then There's only really two options at the end of the day is that you either commit to get it done or you quit.

Okay. And uh I I think this is relevant for people, um, especially younger people, but you know, uh this type of thinking becomes a habit. Especially people who have something that they want to do but then it's difficult and then so they their m their brain enters into like a habit of creating excuses or thinking about this hypothetical as you know, these neurotics.

Um people's neurotic tendencies. And we all have neurotic tendencies. I have neurotic tendencies, but it's about how we manage those. So if there's something that you need to do and you're like, Oh man, but like how am I gonna do that? Like what if this goes wrong and what if this happens? Okay, well then you gotta figure it out. You gotta figure it out and you just have to figure your way through it. You're having difficulty at work. You gotta figure it out. Just get it done.

Okay, you've got a deadline that seems impossible. You just find a way to make it possible somehow. Just do it. Okay. Every piece of energy that is spent on thinking about how it can't be done could be getting you incrementally closer to getting it done. You know, at a simplistic view that's what it means. It's either you just get it done and commit to it and stop like pissing around with like creating excuses and finding all the ways it can't work, and just do it and just shut up and do it.

Or piss off and quit. Okay? That's what Camille Quit is really talking about. Right. And I think there are two types of people that are out there. Okay, not like inherently categorically two types of people that are fixed, but I think there are two ways of thinking and the ways that your brain may have developed.

And if you're a quitter, then you can become a committer. And if you're a committer, then well, I mean good, well done, good for you. But here's the issue is that it's seen too simplistically.

I think commit or quit is very relevant when people struggle to start and get onto doing things. When people struggle to make plans and people struggle to Really think and evaluate. Because I think the hard part is not working hard. Working hard is actually relatively easy.

All you need to do is just put in effort. And yeah, there are some people that just can't work hard. But for most people, especially if you're like the type of person that listens to a podcast about efficiency, then you're going to have a general idea. that in your life you need to work hard and you're not gonna be afraid to work hard. What you just want is you wanna make sure the result and the reward is proportional to the effort that you put in. And that's all good. That's fine, you know?

So I don't think it's actually difficult to work hard. I think a lot of people will work hard. I think the barrier The rate limiting step to this. is not the working hard, but it's the stuff that's a little bit more technical. The examination. The critical thinking, the reflection, the the You know, very cold hard evaluation of how you are progressing, how your process looks.

And is that process enough? Because that has to open you up to the idea that the way that you've been putting in effort may have been completely wrong. And that's a very destabilizing, uncertain, scary thought. Sure, you can try hard, but if someone says that the whole time you've been putting in effort has been completely misdirected, you know, that's disheartening to hear. And we are afraid of that. And facing that, I think, is the hardest part.

So this is where I disagree with the commit or quit, is that if you're trying something and you're trying hard. And you really think you're trying hard. And you know when you're trying hard, you know when you're trying hard, when it's actually starting to affect you like emotionally. If you're getting stressed out by it, you're probably trying hard.

Okay. And here's the thing is that life doesn't exist in isolation. For example, let's say that you're studying and then you're not getting, you know, the best that you can do. But you're studying your best, you're trying hard, okay? Not because necessarily you are spending as many hours as possible studying, but because there may be so many other things going on in your life that's stopping you from spending all that time studying. For example.

If all of your energy is spent on just keeping yourself mentally afloat because your parents are abusive, okay? Or your your spouse is abusive, and you don't have You know, enough just energy and and life left in you. to summon up the motivation required to actually sit and study or learn or you do whatever or exercise.

Yes, you're not spending the hours and time objectively speaking doing the activity, but it doesn't mean you're not trying. You're trying your best. It's just that there are other things that are contributing to it, right? Like m life is almost always generally multifactorial.

multifactorial. So there always gonna be lots of factors that are influencing your ability to do something. And so it's you know very difficult to make a measurement on how well you're doing based on the effort that you're putting in. And I've talked about this before. So I think there's a really serious issue if you are trying hard overall in your life. You're getting stressed out. You're finding that you're

Really like you you wanna get out of this spiral and you're feeling really crap about it, but you can't seem to figure out how to get out of it, right? Super common and I think a lot of you listening to this will probably be able to relate. And yet, if your solution involves you just trying harder, that's insane.

That's insane. It doesn't make sense. There's no possible way that that solution can work. Why would you think that trying harder to do the thing that already empirically is shown to not work for you would actually give you better results? If you could try harder, you would probably be trying harder. And you know what the thing is? The thing is this. The thing is that if the way you were doing it was already something that would work,

You probably wouldn't need to try that hard to begin with anyway. If the answer is trying harder, there are not many situations, not many situations. where actually you are doing the right process, but simply you need to just try harder. A lot of the time the actual direction and process and the way the effort is being utilized.

is incorrect and misguided. And being open enough to accepting that you may have been putting in effort in the wrong way and opening up to different ways and alternatives of doing it. That is the true difficulty and that's what you need to commit to. You need to commit to producing the result, even if it means sacrificing your ego and stability. even if it means sacrificing your own ego and stability.

You need to open yourself up to the idea that you may have been wrong. Not in your intention, not in your effort, not in how hard you tried, and not on how how much you deserve it. but in just the process and the tools that you use to achieve that.

And so Uh the analogy that I give, and you may have heard me talk about this in other videos before, is that it's like the idea of a fly flying into a window, right? Like how m have you ever seen a fly flying into a window? Like it's indoors. And it's trying to get outside and it just flies into this window again and again and it goes a bz.

You know? And you look at it and you think, Okay, well, you know what? I'm gonna be I'm gonna be a saint today. I'm gonna let this fly out. And you open the window. For it to fly out. And yet it will it will it doesn't it just keeps flying into the window like again and again and again and you're like Fly dude. The window is right open next to you. All you need to do is simply just

Have a look around and see that the window is open and just fly through there. And it's like, look, I know that flies don't have brains, they have just simple neural networks. However, you know, the analogy here that I'm trying to make is that that fly is trying very hard to get outside. In fact, it will try so hard that it will smash into that window until it dies. It will literally effort itself to death.

Sound relatable? So the problem is not that this fly didn't commit. You really you you know, it when when when someone tries so hard that they literally die, I don't think that effort was an issue. And uh I've mentioned it before, but it might not be your life that ends, but it might be your livelihood that ends as well. So if you're trying so hard that your livelihood is zero.

You're trying hard. If it is not the issue here. Clearly, if it is not the issue. What we need to commit to instead is the way that we are achieving this. And so As a general rule, I'd say if there's anything that's worth achieving, and the only way that you're going to succeed through that is by having a high level of motivation, I see that as extremely high risk.

Very risky. And by high risk, I mean something that you could be putting lots of effort into and still end up at the bottom of that windowsill dead from effort. Something that you can put in a lot of time and sacrifice a lot for and still not get on the other side of. And if you're if you're you know, for example, if you're a student Right. And you might think I just have to get through uni. Well, like here's a here's a just fact check, reality hit is that work is harder than uni.

And if you're at work and you're thinking, well, if this doesn't work out, I'll just figure something else out here's the thing, is that if the way that you're conducting resolving challenges is through effort alone. Then you're never going to overcome any type of challenge. Even if you move to a different freaking country and get a new job, there's always gonna be a different type of challenge, right? Your life is always going to have challenges. It's just it's damn unavoidable.

And a and as I've mentioned in a previous episode, it's not just unavoidable, it's actually necessary for that fulfillment and satisfaction in life. Okay. And you might be super stressed out and be thinking, no, no, no, no, no. I really don't need challenges. I just need to not have stress. But if you have no stress for like, let's say three years, you're gonna get bored and you're gonna seek those challenges again.

Okay. And because you're gonna seek those challenges, you're gonna then try to s overcome them. And again, if you're trying to overcome those challenges through a effort and motivation driven approach, I think that's just fundamentally broken. And I just think it's so risky like You need you're you're you're creating a plan that relies on you just being lucky enough to get everything right so that you've got the right energy.

sleep, food, social networks, exercise, emotional balance, things going well in your life, for you to be well and optimally motivated to execute on your plan consistently for months or years to get to where you need to go. It's insane. The chances of that happening are so low.

Which is why there are so many people out there. Like you search for motivational people, you know motivational videos. People are watching motivational videos like they're doing cocaine. You know, they're addicted to motivation. Why would you need that much motivation constantly if it really actually works? The issue is that the motivation is so dependent. It's a crutch. Okay. And we get so used to the crutch that we forget that actually there are other ways of walking.

So what we need to do is we need to evaluate and find the plan of least resistance. The one that requires very little motivation, but instead we can turn those into good habits. we can think of systems that we can use in order to create good and meaningful habits. And look. There are a lot of different habit building frameworks that are out there. And I'm not gonna go into that in this particular episode, right? I teach it to my students, I teach it in my courses, there are books on this.

Atomic Habit is a really great book for it, probably the best book at least at the time of uh you know, recording this now, probably the best book on the market for habit building, um, by James Clear. You know, it's a great resource for the right.

Um and any of my students or any of the students that you know have attended any of you know my habit building webinars and things, you know that I've got a very effective system for habit building as well. And you know how r ridiculous it is to use motivation as your only crutch. So that motivation needs to be used as willpower, you know, that willpower to create a spark, a spark of change. Right. And and nothing more than a spark. Nothing more than a spark.

So if you're listening to this and thinking, yeah, yeah, I do need to create a change. This is where w motivation and willpower needs to come in. You need to summon that motivation in order to start creating some good habits that are gonna see you through so that even on your worst day when you've got the flu when you're feeling like crap, when your f entire family has died, when everything is going wrong for you.

Even on those days, your habits will pull you through through. Your habits will pull you through. You need a plan that works on the bad days. Not a plan that works on the good days because everything works on a good day. Okay. It doesn't make sense to make plans for a good day. Make plans that work on the on the worst days and consistency will get you the gains that you need to eventually achieve what you need to achieve. Okay. Consistency is the key.

You can be making one percent improvement consistently every single day. And over time, as long as you maintain the consistency, you'll reach whatever you need to reach. Okay. But if you are instead uh relying on having one or two good days, you know, a a week, then you might be really, really productive for like two or three days or, you know, and maybe in two or three weeks even and you get all these gains. But then your motivation goes down and then your your gains are slower.

And then you feel less. you know, willing to do all those things so your progress is slower and you procrastinate more and you Just m are overall less motivated and then because you're less motivated, you balance your life not as well and then you become even less motivated and then you go into a slump for like maybe two or three months.

But then eventually you kick yourself and you're like, Oh, I gotta get motivated again and you do it and then you you watch that YouTube video and then you you get motivated and you create your plan and you do it and you've got another two or three weeks of

Maximum productivity, feeling good, everything's great. Okay. Maybe you sustain it for a month, but then you've got another like three, four months of a slump. So any gains you make, you just basically completely reduce them to nothing because of the fact that you're going through this endless cycle of just Productive, not productive, productive, not productive, productive, not productive. You know, it's just dramatic peaks and troughs, and those troughs can last for months or years even.

It's just not worth it. And eventually you start burning out because you you'll get into the mindset of like, man, what is this wrong with me? Why can't I just maintain productivity like everyone else? Okay, well here's the here's the thing, is that everyone else doesn't. Everyone else also goes through this endless cycle and it doesn't get anywhere. It's a cycle that leads inevitab inevitably to burnout.

So that's the issue. The issue is that there is a cycle occurring at all. What it needs to be is simply you just rely on these habits that turn over work for you. It's like It's like passive income, but like passive income for your life. It's like you're not having to even really put in any effort or motivation. You just do these things because it's just what you do and you don't have an emotional attachment to it. You just do it and you get the rewards necessary from doing it.

Okay, and it's good, it's great. It it just works and it just works. And then sometimes things get tough and things get challenging and then at that point you have all this willpower and motivation and reserve. to stop you from giving up and you can use that reserve. And motivate yourself when you need to. And then you can clear through those particular obstacles.

But you need to have enough motivation and reserve to even do that in the first place, right? And if you enter into a state of what's called willpower exhaustion because all you've used is willpower, then you're really not gonna get anywhere eventually. It's just a matter of time before it burns out. So Look at the way that you're conducting yourself. Look at the processes that you're using. How much of it relies on you just having a good day? If it at all does That's not the right plan.

Right. We need to think of what are the plans that will allow us to achieve the result that we need to incrementally every day getting us even one percent closer, but requiring no motivation in order to do that. Okay, and if you do that, I can damn near guarantee you're gonna start seeing some results and a way of living life that seems like you could do this forever.

It feels sustainable and you're not going to wanna just quit and burn out and flee the country and just start a new life and escape from all of it because it seems sustainable. And that sustainability is something that I think is extremely, extremely valuable. Alright, so that's the that's the focus for this episode. So till next time, stay efficient.