Push it to the limit or . . .?

# Chapter 177

How to find our limits and how to know when to cut our losses? Honestly I don’t know. These two overlap in such a way that I could argue for either, but I can’t think of a formula for when to break one of them off in favor of the other action. The find-our-limits club is the never quit club. If you quit, if you give up, if you stop then there is no way for you to discover and explore the outer reaches of your capabilities. And I am not sure why we are in love with the idea of going as far as we can go on any given subject or action, but we seem to be. Perhaps it is the idea of loss that drives this phenomenon instead. That if I don’t become all that I could have been, then I have lost something precious, the world has lost some new vaccines, the universe is one doctor short of . . . whatever. There is some kind of equation here about potential and actualization. About becoming what you were made to do, sent to accomplish, your mission in life can’t be realized unless you find your limits?

The cut-your-losses-on-a-losing-bet club are the stop quickly group. Don’t keep pouring resources into a black hole kind of thing. This would be the innovator’s club, where you iterate quickly and intentionally and regularly, only staying with some pursuit or action or development as long as the positive results are clear and apparent. This is how many of the most useful tools we use in every day life were created. They aren’t push-it-to-the-limit tools.

And there you have it. Oh and don’t forget sunk costs to mix this up even more. I am sure there are other factors that I am forgetting or not realizing, this is a complicated subject and it was fun thinking about it.