We’re switching gears today.
Today I want to talk about those people that don’t get a lot of mentions here on the blog.
The unsung heroes.
The ones who are always right.
The ones that never get enough attention.
The realistic ones.
The quitters.
This ones for you.
And for all of you doers out there – maybe you can pick up a lesson or two from these 7 Habits of Highly Effective Quitters
7 Habits of Highly Effective Quitters
Table of Contents
1. Don’t Even Start
The best quitters never even start. After all the best way to quit is to quit before you even start. That way you leave no question about things. If you don’t start anything, you’ll have so much more room for other activities!
Seriously, the more time you waste on doing something or pursuing something you want, the less time you have for important activities like quitting projects, complaining and generally talking about how lame it is that nothing ever works out.
2. Get Really Good At Explaining Your Excuses
Now, if you’re really unfortunate, you might have some friends who want you to make yourself better.
STOOOPID.
Work on your quick draw. Have at least 5 really great excuses ready for why you didn’t start.
- I’m tired.
- It’s hard.
- It’s complicated
- It’d easy
- You don’t understaaannnnnnnd (best one ever)
Remember, use the last one only in emergencies. Or every single time you’re questioned. Either way. Unstoppable. Win!
Another stellar option is any time someone does something they’re proud of quickly dismiss this with a flip “I could totally do that”, quickly followed up by a short list of totally legitimate reasons why it’s not worth your time because you’re better than them.
It simultaneously lets you be egotistical, diminish others accomplishments without making you actually have to do anything. 3 birds. 1 stone. Boom.
3. Believe Your Own Stories
It’s not enough to convince others about your excuses. You need to sell it to yourself.
COMMIT TO IT
You know how Christian Bale lost 60+ pounds to be in the Machinist? You need to do that. Become the person you need to be in order to sell yourself on your inability.
Forget all of your natural talents, abilities and potential if you actually applied yourself. Focus on the obstacles and convince yourself how hard you specifically have it.
Remember, the key to this is maintaining a vacuum. Here’s a few tips.
- Believe the world revolves around you and your happiness. If you do, life will make more sense and you can become more easily outraged at the fact that traffic doesn’t stop when you need it to and that the billions of people for some strange reason aren’t acting with your specific intersts in mind. For some reason they’re not considering YOUR NEEDS while going about their 7 billion other lives. WTF?
- Do your best to forget the fact that you have more opportunity and technology available to you than 90% of the world and pretty much all of human history.
Remember, your life is hard because
- you don’t know what terms to google to figure out just about anything you could want to learn.
- the gym is like, at least, ten minutes away from your house.
- people might look at you weird if you try something different
- flying around the world takes all of 12 hours.
- candy bars are really tempting.
Life. Is. Rough.
Stay away from news about wars, poverty and other basic things like water or education that other people struggle with on a day to day basis . Those might tempt you to think that your definition of “hard” might be slightly relative.
Lies.
Remember, this is about all about you. Whatever you do, remember that it doesn’t matter how thin the pretense for your excuse is. If you believe it to your core – it doesn’t matter if others believe you or not. You’ve already won.
4. Make Sure To Tell Others
It’s not good enough for you to quit. There’s strength in numbers so make sure to spread it around. Surround yourself with other quitters.
Hopefully, these are people who are well practiced in the art of giving up before they ever started.
If you’ve got friends who are actually trying to do something, be sure to tell them them to give up as soon as possible. Encourage them to quit quit and remind them of how hard it is. Focus on why they can’t do it and why the idea is dumb and the other countless reasons why action is pointless. Offer unsolicited advice about why it’s impossible.
If you can make them discouraged, you’ve got a good chance.
The louder you are, the better. If you have a whiney voice – practice it in the mirror. It will let people know that your reasons are really serious and emotional. Bonus points if you throw in: “I used to think that too but then I became [smarter/faster/older/wiser/better] than to believe such things. Condescending sneers are encouraged.
5. Spend Lots of Time Consuming
Every once in a while you might feel like doing something yourself.
Screw that (see item #1).
Never create anything yourself. This is a gateway drug. If you do this, you might create more things, find that they’re useful and get addicted to making things and impressing your will upon the world.
Stop.
Fill any and all free time with mindless activities. Ideally these include Netflix, Reality TV, Celebrity Gossip, Video Games, YouTube videos and Cat GIFs.
Whatever you can do to numb your mind – do it.
If you feel the need to satisfy doing something, here’s a quick fix.
- Don’t do it (this is important).
- Google “person doing X activity”
- Find a website/youtube channel or other outlet of some person doing X activity.
- Read & Watch everything they’ve ever written. Once you’ve gone through all their content, go through it again.
- Breathe & Relax. You’ve successfully avoided the temptation to do something yourself. You’ll notice the dopamine start to fill your brain as you reassure yourself that, “I’m reading about people doing cool things – so I get partial credit for doing them myself.”
6. Never Try Anything New
Pick one language in one town and one thing and stick to it. Go on vacation one time a year – hopefully on a cruise so you can go to a lot of different coutnries but still experience all-you-can-eat-buffets, casinos and ‘MURICA! while never getting off the boat.
If you start to think about doing something new: immediately pre-disqualify yourself (use imaginary reasons if necessary). These new ideas are dangerous and if let them progress too far, they may lead to action. Don’t let this happen (again, see rule #1).
7. Be Really Defensive
No one has the right to challenge you. No one.
They don’t know what you’ve been through and they’re not you – so how dare they try and challenge you to change something and do it better?
It doesn’t matter if they have a good point, a different point of view or other experiences that might be beneficial to you in some way/shape/form and it especially doesn’t matter if they care about your or not.
Don’t try to listen. Instead defend your status quo to the death. It can’t get here fast enough!
Be as easily offended as possible. That way everyone will know you’re right by how outraged you get. Never even consider thinking about another point of view. That will make other people think that you think you’re wrong – which you never could be. No one can understand your unique position in life, but through sheer cunning and ingenuity, you understand everything perfectly and can dissect world problems with surgeon-like precision.
Remember: your rightness is directly correlated with how angry you can get.
If possible, avoid any actual discussion as much as possible. Better yet, if you’ve done your homework on step #4, you should be surrounded only by people who only approve of your current lack of activities – that way you never have to question yourself.
If you do this right, you’ll never even even have to interact with any of these “offensive” people, but you’ll always feel like you’re being actively persecuted by them (so you get the best of both worlds!).
Above All
Above all, remember that anytime you come to a crossroads, just quit. It’s the easiest thing in the world – and after all – life is about making things easy. I mean seriously, if it’s hard, that must mean it’s probably not worth doing.
And remember: the easy choice is always the right choice. Always.
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Or…you could suck it up, decide that what you want is worthwhile, realize your excuses suck and that it’s not all about you, decide to do the hard stuff anyways, put your head down, persevere and go for it….but that sounds way too hard.
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Reminder: If you want to submit your New Years transformation entry, you can do so here.
Awesome article, so true. I just started going back to school, and also doing the p90x program and I kept giving myself the excuse “it’s too hard” But I pretty much did what your last paragraph said. I realized my excuses were lame and that the outcome was definitely worthwhile once I completed both of these.
Joel, this really is wonderful. Full of sage advice and just the right amount of sarcasm to inspire us to get off our butts and do something important. The only thing I can think to add would be something about “forgiveness” that seems to be the new gold standard of … well, everything and it too is a dualism for quitters.
Haha this is one of the best posts I’ve read in a while – thanks Joel.
Very true and all easy things to do. I find myself getting defensive very easily sometimes. I dismiss what others tell me because “I know” the right thing to do, or so I think.
I would add afraid of failure too. Being afraid to fail can cripple you even after you have started. Thanks Joel!
This gave me a good laugh this morning before work. You encapsulated every excuse & reason to quit perfectly. Great post!
Well said, and more importantly, well lived.
Good work sir.
Hahhah great post Joel!..it was a really creative/fun idea to switch viewpoints for once just for the fun of it!
I’m pretty sure if someone asked me today who the people I admire the most are,your name would certainly appear somewhere on the list…thank’s a lot man!
Excellent. How crazy that I have two people in my life right now that I want to send this to, but probably shouldn’t. Maybe I’ll print it out and leave it underneath their windshield wiper. Not maybe, I am doing it right now! Nice work, Joel!
Awesome! It’s unfortunately hilarious because we know so many people who do these things and most of us (including myself) are guilty of having said or done these at some point in our lives. What a great observation. Awesome post, Joel!
Thank you. This was just the kick in the pants that I needed. I’ve been boxing for about 3 months, and things are really challenging right now at my gym, and the pull is definitely to give up because there seem to be traps around every corner that I need to navigate as a woman, as a white woman, as a newbie in a boxing gym, etc., but it’s worth it. I need to remember that. I have to.
A humbling like this is often needed. I truly believe that if you want something, you’ll do it or go after it. If you don’t want to do it, you’ll think of an excuse. We all have the same excuses — time, work, commitments, etc. Yet so many of us are able to get things done.
Man, I can see a lot of this in me,
you rock. this is amazing. all your posts are amazing. thanks for the inspiration. I want to go skydiving now. And take over the world.
The worse part is that you don’t even realize you are a quitter. I was a quitter my hole life until a friend of mine dropped some light on me and I realized that I had been quitting on everything. Since that moment I have tried my hard to never quit again..
When in doubt, just do it.