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4 Blissful Reasons to Quit Your Battle for a While

From time to time, we all come across the same words of advice:

For the most part, these principles are fantastic. They propel growth and give us a solid direction to follow. They are battle cries that motivate us in our struggles.

But sometimes quitting is a better option.

Sometimes it’s the best thing you can do.

I did my best to write something here on Medium every week since the start of 2019. I was determined to keep it that way, come hell or high water.

The first three months were as smooth as possible, and then…

April came. The last month before I become a father.

Panic struck like a bolt of purple lightning, shattering the gentle walls of “Oh, I still have time” that I had built around myself.

I don’t have any time left. At all.

Aw, man.

This realization caused a sudden and almost painful shift of priorities: first things first, long-term goals will have to wait.

No matter what I did, no matter what I tried to do, my thoughts returned to one vital thesis:

Medium will wait. Social media will wait. Everything will wait.

Survive the crisis first.

I decided to quit all my unpaid activities for a while and went berserk on freelance writing. The goal was to earn enough to pay for the baby’s delivery plus possible unexpected expenses so that we won’t have to dip into our savings. Or, well, not too much.

At some point, I noticed some form of slimy shame building up inside me. I felt ashamed for leaving aside several aspects of my growth as a writer, for being too weak to handle everything with grace, for dropping what I started just a few months into the adventure.

Now, I’m immensely grateful that I quit. I’m thankful for this month away.

Here’s why.

On any given day, your inner resources are limited.

Your energy, time, and motivation are all finite things, so choosing how you will use them is critical for your progress.

As it goes, “if you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.”

But it goes further than this.

If you need explosive growth, you can’t have more than one priority.

It’s like having a limited amount of wood on your hands, and several bonfires to keep burning. Pick one for a massive fire.

Putting aside my long-term writing goals allowed me to free a massive amount of energy to grow in my freelancing. I was able to land more gigs, seize more resources, and gather more connections that I would have with several things to focus on.

Now, I’m much calmer and better prepared for what’s coming my way — and this sets the right tone for returning to Medium, Twitter, and everything related.

I don’t know about you, but here’s how I feel.

When I work too hard on a particular project, part of my mind gets lost in this line of work. The immersion is so deep that I get overwhelmed, blinded, consumed by it. A great part of the meaning escapes from my conscious mind, and I can no longer see (really see!) what I’m working on.

I struggle and panic over the tiny details, forgetting where the hell I’m headed in the first place. It’s like I’m constantly crashing against streetlights because I’m looking under my feet instead of directly in front of me.

I can’t see the forest for the trees.

During this month away from Medium, I had plenty of time to think through my next steps, read my previous posts, and generally reevaluate my growth strategy. If I were writing here at the same time, I’d be worrying about my headlines and stories instead, about the responses and timing, about the images and styling.

This month, I was all about the forest.

To approach old struggles with a new attitude, it can be a tremendous help to leave them for a while.

During your time away from your problem or work, your subconscious mind would continue plotting and scheming and mapping everything you could do.

Then you return to whatever it was you had quit — and you see that it’s an all-new thing, and you are an all-new person as well.

The freshness of this discovery — of a new river and a new person — is often enough to fill you with a huge wave of energy to produce outstanding work.

The easiest way to identify where exactly you suck is to put yourself in a critical situation.

When I realized I didn’t have enough energy for BOTH my long-term projects AND my freelancing, I chose the latter.

But why did I have to choose in the first place?

I didn’t have any posts written beforehand.

This means that in case of ANY emergency, I’d have to pause everything here, no alternatives. Medium and social media proved to be my weakest spots.

Ouch. Well, realizing your problem is the first step to fixing it, so hurray to that! Now, it’s time to fix things and prepare for possible emergencies.

For the magic of quitting to work, there’s only one rock-solid requirement.

It has to be temporary.

Then, quitting becomes a form of rest — it may be prolonged, or painful, or unwanted, but it still will be rest.

You’ll come back from it filled with new energy to stand stronger than ever.

Sometimes you win when you lose.

Sometimes you achieve way more by quitting for a while than by struggling until your gums bleed and your brain can’t think straight anymore.

Now breathe in, breathe out.

Have a rest.

Quit for a while.

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