How long should you keep trying?
Three strikes … and then?
This post is for anyone wondering how long you should keep at your craft and/or if you’re considering giving up.
There are plenty of podcasts and articles out there about resilience and keeping going etc., so I’ll not offer that here.
Instead, I’d like to give you another way of thinking about it, one that I use to decide if something is worth my time.
Allow me to be frank for a moment. If you feel you’re not having success right now, giving up could be the answer if you’re certain of the following:
Can you surrender the pursuit and find peace without it?
Answer that question for yourself.
If you’re not sure right now, test it out. Give up for a few days and see what happens. Go out, get some air, do something completely unrelated to the thing.
At first you’ll probably get some relief but once that passes, live for a couple more days without it. See how that feels.
Is that a better life? Have you found some peace?
If the answer is yes, then perhaps you should gently let it go. This is a good thing, a decisive and a worthy thing. Now you can free your mind and time for something else, even if that is simply more head space ... Ah! We could all do with a bit more head space ...
Years ago I tried coding and although I gave it a good shot, I was struggling and wasn’t sure if this was because I was a beginner or because it didn’t suit me. So I gave up for a few days and, you guessed it, the desire utterly left me. But I’m glad I tried it and I’m also glad I gave up. It not only focused my mind more on the things that really matter to me, it taught me something valuable.
I learned that your desire/ambition for something is critical. It’s the thing that will keep you going through the steep learning curve in the early stages and beyond. (Which, BTW, in my experience is never an upward curve. It’s more of a three steps forward, two steps back kind of a thing, and all that aimed at an ever-shifting horizon.)
So, what if after you’ve taken your break, you find your desire is still there. What now?
Although your craft will still be a struggle to master, if it’s the right fit for you, I’d like to propose this:
Life is better for the challenge.
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