I'm asking in a more general and philosophical sense than just quitting a job. When do you know it's time to give up on something, in general? Be it a relationship, an activity/hobby/job, a diet, a goal, a strategy/tactic, et cetera. No one is good at everything, and one consequence of taking risks and trying new things is failure. Often we can dust ourselves off and either keep trying and eventually find success, or give up and try something different without much mental anguish. Sometimes, though, it's hard to accept or even recognize when we're failing at something, especially if it's important to us that we succeed at it.
For the sake of simplicity, let's say failing means 1) that you put in more effort than you get back in utility, that is, you are not achieving success (where success would be getting back at least as much or more value than you're putting in); 2) the correlation between effort in/utility out is not strong, that is, utility out does not seem to scale with effort in, and 3) based on inductive reasoning over a given period of time, you have little to no expectation of improvement in the ratio of effort in/utility out--that is, you don't seem to be getting better no matter how hard you try. (Feel free to disagree with these definitions.)
Say you've always dreamed of being a star football player, and you keep training and training and playing and playing, but you never make the team--maybe you're strong, maybe you're skilled, maybe you're even naturally talented, but something is missing; you're just a little too slight, a little too slow, et cetera. After X seasons of not making the cut, inductive reasoning lends you to believe you have little chance of making the team in the future, either. By the above definition, you are failing to achieve your goal of being a football player, much less a star.
Meanwhile, all that heavy training and effort is not without toll. Banging up your body, wearing on your spirit. You push harder and harder to stay in place, watching peers overtake you. Eventually you start to resent football in general. And for all you know, maybe you could be successful as a coach, or even a gymnast or some other kind of athlete altogether, if only you were putting your time into those pursuits instead.
So do you keep trying? Do you burn the ships, go all in regardless? Do you smash yourself to bits in pursuit of a dream? We idolize this mentality: "never give up, never surrender". But is that really best? Is it admirable to refuse to give up something when it's not working, or is it an expensive mistake?
Failure in and of itself isn't necessarily expensive, but failing to recognize failure and continuing on failing at something has to come at a cost, right? At the very least, continuing to fail represents an opportunity cost. Couldn't you be doing something else with that time/effort and finding success instead of failure? Not to mention, the physical, mental, and emotional costs of continuing to fail. This is obvious in the football player example, who risks real physical harm simply by continuing to play and train for the game at a high level, but I think most failure comes with emotional and physical toll, albeit sometimes more subtle.
I think these questions must be particularly tough for really driven, highly competent people like those on this forum, which is why I ask. Most of us are used to succeeding at what we do. Failure is a bitter pill to swallow, but IMHO sometimes we do have to take the medicine. For our own good.
What metrics do you use to gauge when giving up or changing directions would be the best course? Some combination of likelihood for improvement based on inductive reasoning times ratio of current effort to reward (divided by cost of continued effort/failure)? Are you swayed to quit at things when your efforts are not paying off with success (or improvement toward success), or are you of the burn the ships, win-or-die mentality*? For how long do you keep trying? Does your answer change depending on the endeavor, or on how much success in the endeavor matters to you?
And when/if you do give up, how do you accept that failure and move on, especially if succeeding at the endeavor was important to you? How do you reframe it?
*Hell, this even sort of applies to the frequent questions about marriage, since IIRC many of you supported the practice as essentially a means of "burning the ships". :b
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