Pivoting

Sometimes, the way to move forward is to quit.

There’s a dogmatic principle that’s drilled into us starting from an early age, which goes something like, “quitting is betrayal and bad, and persevering is honorable and good.” Philosophically, maybe this is more right than wrong. But strategically, it can lead to disaster.

In the startup world, founders and investors learned that sometimes, the best path forward is to quit what you’re doing and do something else – they call this “pivoting”. What startups can’t afford to do is grind precious resources over years working on something that isn’t going anywhere, so they “pivot”, take their team and resources, and work on something else – oftentimes, something completely unrelated from what they were previously working on. This pivot can happen after weeks, months, or even years of working on the original venture. 

We can “pivot” too in our own lives. Many people pigeonhole themselves in various facets of their lives because they feel it is “wrong” to quit, or because of Sunk Cost Fallacy. But changing course is sometimes necessary. It isn’t quitting. It’s moving forward.