Quitting (previously published as Mastering the Art of Quitting) (6 page)

 

Chapter Two

Unsuccessful Quitting

It may come as a surprise that in addition to not knowing why they're thinking what they're thinking much of the time, people are relatively clueless about both what will make them happy and how happy they'll be. Many of us will set goals for ourselves, only to discover that what we once wanted isn't enough. Given the absence of a reliable crystal ball, being able to decide whether to disengage from a goal and then the ability to let go and start over are essential life skills.

Please note the word
disengage. Disengagement
or
artful quitting
has nothing to do with the emotionally fueled quitting that many, if not all of us, have indulged in at one point or another in our lives. Some of us may actually have a signature quitting style, and if you have one, it's worth identifying this first before you begin learning how to quit artfully.

The following styles of quitting aren't scientific descriptions of how people quit, of course; they're meant to be evocative enough so that you can recognize aspects of your own behavior and quitting style.

The Slacker Quit

We've already mentioned the habitual quitter in the first chapter but it's worth revisiting since the
slacker quit
is what comes to mind
when the word
quit
is mentioned. This style of quitting—invoked when the going gets rough or when the situation appears to put more demands on the person that he or she anticipated—is as much about not engaging as it is about quitting. This kind of quitting actually can become a pattern in a person's life and fans out over a broad range of activities. As a rule, these folks rarely finish anything.

The O.K. Corral

The
O.K. Corral
type of quitting refers to the posturing, winner-take-all kind of quit. This approach usually tries to show the quitter in the best possible light, making the act of quitting part of a moral or another imperative. Its narrative is framed to put the emphasis on what might have been lost had the person persisted, as in “I quit because my integrity was more important to me.” You can substitute any number of other nouns for the word
integrity
in that sentence, but the gist will remain the same. Because this style of quitting invokes an ethical high ground, one of its appeals is that it blunts the cultural onus on quitting.

A good contemporary and public example of the O.K. Corral is that of Greg Smith, the Goldman Sachs manager who quit on the op-ed pages of the
New York Times
after “discovering,” some twelve years into the job, that the investment bank cared more about its own profits than its clients' interests. In Smith's case, the op-ed quit got him a seven-figure book advance, but for most people, the O.K. Corral approach, while momentarily very satisfying and ego-boosting, can do enormous damage to a career. If you're counting on referrals or staying in the same industry, it's a bridge burner and not a very smart move.

In the area of personal relationships, especially divorce, the O.K. Corral pretty much guarantees widespread collateral damage since the other person will, of necessity, be cast as the bad guy and the middle ground will most certainly disappear. Celebrity divorces often devolve into the O.K. Corral mode, with each party trying to
work the cycle of publicity and spin to his or her advantage. If you'd like to see the O.K. Corral in action as black comedy, just rent the movie
The War of the Roses
.

Emotional dishonesty is, by definition, built into this style of quitting since the person quitting doesn't have to take any responsibility for the actions or behaviors that preceded the moment of quitting, or for the quit itself. It's all whitewashed in the name of the higher value that “forced” the quit. As a result, the O.K. Corral approach isn't likely to yield real personal growth or much happiness and is unlikely to open up new opportunities. Cleaning up after the shoot-out is real work.

The Faux Quit

The
faux quit
isn't a single quitting style but has many variations on a similar theme. But all versions of the faux quit, while appearing to move the person toward the exit, actually keep him or her in place. The person may actually go through various motions that suggest disengagement, such as temporarily severing a relationship, setting new boundaries, or suggesting different courses of action, but he or she will ultimately retreat from them. There's plenty of room to spare for this brand of quitting in the areas of long-term goals, career, and relationships. The faux quit sustains, rather than ends, conflict.

Stressed familial relationships—between mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, siblings—sometimes develop a cyclical pattern of faux quitting, which effectively keeps either an emotional resolution or even a détente out of reach. Conflicting desires—being dissatisfied with a partner but being unwilling to be alone, hating the work but liking the pay, and other similar contradictory or conflicting emotions—can turn the faux quit into an incomplete quit that leaves the person feeling utterly stymied or seemingly paralyzed. For all that she or he may be completely articulate about the need and desire to quit, the person nonetheless remains unable to
do it. Faux quitting often becomes a holding pattern, leaving the person suspended, unable either to commit to a course of action fully or to give it up in the absence of therapy. And sometimes, not even therapy can resolve the conflict.

The faux or incomplete quit also describes what happens when a person leaves a situation or a relationship or abandons a long-term life goal but continues to think and ruminate about it as much as he or she did before. Think of the divorcée who spends hours talking about her ex-husband on dates with other men, the person who's been fired and bad-mouths his former employers in every interview, or the person who gives up a pursuit but remains so emotionally entangled in it that he lacks the energy to move forward. Long and heavily litigated divorce cases are often the result of one or even two incomplete quits; despite appearing to be finalizing their split, the parties are nonetheless fully engaged, each looking to “win.” By definition, the faux quit keeps you engaged.

The Threatening Quit

The
threatening quit
could be called the “If you don't do this, then I'll quit” stance. What “this” stands for in that sentence is entirely up to you. The threatening quit isn't a real quit at all; it's a manipulation by way of a threat to quit. Often, the person who is doing the threatening really has no intention of ending whatever interaction is involved. This style of quitting is familiar to managers in the workplace, where it's sometimes used as a ploy to get a raise or promotion. Threatening to quit does sometimes work in the short term, but it's never a good long-term strategy; eventually, someone will take the person up on the threat. In personal relationships, threatening to quit is often part of a pattern of passive-aggressive behavior, with one person palliating the other, temporarily at least. The threatening quit is usually about power. Strictly speaking, this approach is a not-too-healthy way of engaging.

The Disappearing Act

While the
disappearing act
is an actual quit characterized by slinking, the person who's quitting or leaving offers no reason for his or her decision. Although the disappearing act is sometimes meant to devastate (“You're not even worth confronting!”) or punish (“Wait until the team has to pick up the slack I've left them!”), most of the time the disappearing act simply betrays the disappearing person's lack of either courage or intention. This style tends to confirm every negative the culture holds about quitting generally. It also doesn't bode well for the person quitting, since the gesture is self-serving and does little to move him or her forward into new territory. The person may have disappeared but has plenty of baggage in tow.

With the advent of digital communications, the disappearing act has become the preferred method of relationship breakups for teenagers all over the country, so much so that there are seminars being given to middle school and high school students on why the text or Facebook breakup is unhealthy. Members of the perpetually connected and wired millennial generation, too, sometimes avail themselves of text and e-mail when disappearing from jobs or relationships since this electronic approach is an easy way of avoiding confrontation. This is not good news since the disappearing act tends to leave the quitter with reams of unfinished business.

The Big Bang

This is the “enough is enough” moment—that straw that famously broke the camel's back—and when it comes to work, love, and life, probably the most self-destructive quitting style of all since it's totally reactive, emotionally fueled, and devoid of planning or conscious thought. With or without the slamming of a door or other grandiose gestures, the big bang leaves the quitter with a mess to clean up and a future path littered with emotional and other debris,
even if he or she is finally out of there. Some managers who are dissatisfied with an employee's performance but who shrink from actually firing people or are motivated by avoiding paying unemployment insurance will sometimes try to engineer a big bang reaction. A corporate power play by one executive may try to evoke a big bang response from another.

While the big bang
does
release you from whatever prison you've found yourself trapped in, it leaves you with no clear path ahead and no fallback position. Because the big-bang quit usually follows (and is often the result of) a long period of stress, frustration, and high emotion, this explosive style of quitting often leaves you vulnerable to a long period of second-guessing, rumination, and, sometimes, remorse. In most ways, it is the opposite of true goal disengagement and is a contender for the worst quitting style along with the O.K. Corral.

The Stealth Quit

We could also call the
stealth quit
the “liar, liar, pants on fire” style since this kind of quitting entails pretending not to quit and perhaps even pledging renewed effort while the person is actually heading for the door. Collaborative projects—from the shared social-studies report in middle school to business partnerships in the adult world—are often plagued by the stealth quit, which is usually driven by the quitter's unwillingness to own up to wanting out. The cultural onus on quitting is, in part, to blame for the stealth quit, but there are other motivators as well.

Why This Kind of Quitting Fails

None of these quitting styles is close to artful quitting or goal disengagement. At their best, they manage to sever the person from
the pursuit of the goal on the surface at least, but leave in place all the mechanisms that keep humans persisting in one form or another. None provides any forward motion toward the creation of new goals and possibilities.

Most important, these styles of quitting fail to address or effectively counteract all the habits of mind (and brain) that keep us persisting at and engaging in goals, pursuits, and relationships long past their expiration date and wrestling with those intrusive thoughts we can't control. These quitting styles effectively leave us stuck in one way or another; they don't change our ways of looking at things. They do nothing to resolve conflicts of interest. Nor do they help us manage the emotions that may flood us when we give up on something we genuinely thought would make us happy. They don't stop us from ruminating about how things might have gone differently, or second-guessing ourselves. They don't open a pathway to motivating ourselves to set new goals and to cut bait on old goals that can get in the way of new ones. They don't help us recalibrate and start over.

True goal disengagement does all of that, and more.

Stumbling Blocks

Even when we do quit an endeavor, the first question people will ask is whether we've tried to make it work. For example, when a person mentions an impending divorce (something roughly half of us will face), friends and strangers alike will ask if the couple has gone to counseling. The culturally acceptable answer is yes, which attests to our efforts to persist despite the union's ultimate failure and takes a bit of the onus off. Answer it in the negative, though, and see what people think and say. Many of us are so conditioned to feel ashamed if we show any lack of persistence or—heaven forbid—actually decide to quit, that we're likely to feel as though we have to explain ourselves. Unfortunately, we may find ourselves inadvertently sabotaging our effort to move forward in life.

That was certainly the case for Tim, a man close to thirty who was a graduate of an Ivy League college and law school. He had going for him all the things that successful people need in a corporate culture—a great education, charm, intelligence, and, from college sports, a reputation for being a team player. But after four years on a partnership track, he realized that while he loved certain aspects of his work—traveling and talking to clients who were forging new businesses—he most definitely didn't like the nuts and bolts of drafting the contracts that were, in fact, his main job description. He found himself wishing he were on the other side of the desk, creating new business, on the one hand, while he worried that his bosses might ferret out his dissatisfaction, on the other. He sought a therapist's counsel, and at the counselor's suggestion, Tim started going on informational interviews, learning what he could about where to head next. He had plenty of good contacts—a wide circle of friends, acquaintances, and friends of friends—and it all seemed promising.

Oddly enough, these informational interviews—which usually evolve into other meet and greets and then actual interviews and offers of employment—were pretty much dead ends. People just weren't referring him onto the next level. Why was that? It turned out that during these conversations, Tim always worked in a comment or two about how it had been an enormous mistake going to law school and then wasting another four years and how he had screwed up his career path. In other words, he was both apologizing for and presenting himself as a quitter, instead of promoting himself as a potential resource for a company, given his background. Tim wasn't doing this consciously, of course; he was, without realizing it, expressing his own doubts about quitting.