Is it true that quitters never win and winners never quit?
August 19th, 2009 8:46 pm by Shane
The title of this post is inspired by the seemingly sudden decision I made with regards to my last internet project, The Libertarian Dime. After sixteen months of podcasting mostly about libertarian politics, I reached my limit. The last few weeks of the show we (we being myself, Jonathan, and Mike) found ourselves talking about everything but politics. The format of the show had begun to feel stale, and I didn't know what to do. Then I thought about it a little more, and realized I had an inkling of what needed to be done, but I didn't want to do it. I couldn't continue to talk about politics.
I emailed my co-hosts as soon as it crystallized in my mind that I needed to quit doing the podcast. Jonathan, who started the podcast with me, messaged me a couple days later and seemed to have independently come to the same conclusion. We were done, we quit, and we moved on. The show was well received by our listeners and guests , but in addition to be burned out, we realized we weren't that popular, and probably would never be that popular.
Were we quitters who couldn't hack it when the going got tough?
I have pondered this a lot since we ended The Dime, and, surprisingly, I have come to the conclusion that "quitting" was the smartest thing we could have done. Creative projects have finite lifespans. If you don't believe me, go back and watch the last 2 seasons of the X-Files. Would anyone fault Chris Carter now if he had decided enough was enough once David Duchovny left the show full time? While The Dime was in no way in the same class of art as the X-Files, we did do some good work, talked with a lot of cool guests and learned a whole lot about interviewing people live (and often without notes). I learned to stop hogging all the airtime (eventually anyway), and Jonathan's two part questions with multiple sub-parts became much tighter as time went on. However, we just didn't find an audience and an audience didn't find us. Alas, between that and burnout we "quit."
I think quitting is underrated. During my twelve years at my current company, there have been two times I wish we had "quit" working on the project I was working on. The first time, we didn't, and I continued on a career death march for another year. The second time, we quit at the perfect time and my sanity was maintained. Quitting was the right thing to do, as it freed up resources and allowed us to take a fresh perspective on the different markets we were trying to succeed in as a company.
I feel the same way about The Dime. Jonathan and I spent a ton of time working on the podcast and didn't have as much time (or any) to focus on writing for the website. The time we spent on the podcast will now be dedication to writing content for LessThanCredulous.com.
LessThanCredulous.com is the first formal project than Jonathan and I have undertaken that will be about writing original content from an investigator's mindset. One thing that I learned while doing the podcast, was that we both had a knack for asking questions that the interviewee hadn't heard of or though of before. We choose to look at this as a positive. We will take this knack and apply it to a broader range of topics. Nothing will be out of bounds, even politics if we can muster the strength. There will be interviews, there will be speculation, there will be humor, there will be Bigfoot I'm sure. I can't wait.
So you see, I didn't quit out of laziness or fear, but because I wanted to do more. I'd say that's a fine reason for quitting.
