To Pivot or Not to Pivot

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Yurui’s Summary

• How do you know when to give up?

• Some think that it depends on desire, aptitude, enjoyment, delayed gratification, or levels of hardship.

• Personally, I think that there is no right answer, and that you should trust your intuition, and listen to your heart and mind’s desire.

• At the end of the day, well, who knows what we should be doing. There is no perfect life - we just have to make the best decisions we can in the moment, and let fate take control of the rest.

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It’s a simple question: how do I know when to give up?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently - when I’m trying something new and I’m not enjoying it, how do I know whether to fight for it (to see if it gets better) or if I should let it go (move on and try something else)?

To what extent should we embrace hardship as a way to grow?

On one hand, you can endure hardship and try to see if there is a meaning to your suffering or you could instead just let go of a hobby after it does not resonate with you. Sometimes, we only derive fulfilment from a hobby after an extended period amount of time. Maybe, we need to suffer in order to learn and grow.

One of my mates who works in VC says that decision making depends on desire. Say, for example, that you’ve started running, and it’s painful as hell. But after it’s done, you ask “do I want to do this tomorrow?” And that is how you shoud make decisions.

Another fellow community builder thinks that you should do something until you’re considered good at it, and then make a decision.

When I asked the bois’ group chat, their opinions were:

• “At first, you’re like excited to try it out, then it gets hard, then once u get over that hurdle (you never get over that hurdle - that’s what makes it interesting), but the thing is a lot of ppl get over that and find enjoyment. Enjoyable -> hard -> enjoyable.”

• “I'll probably let go of that hobby; it kinda depends on you though. I'm lucky that all of my hobbies have really clicked which is like X, Y, and Z. For all of these hobbies there has been a zone where I felt like I wasn't really improving, and that's when I wanted to quit the most. But I just try to work past that stage.”

• “Ok I think this depends on how much you want it and the possible benefits; seeing it is a hobby I would quit it is it really doesn't work out. E.g. X never worked for me so I didn't really try as much. On the other hand, I hated Y at the start, but I fought for it because it was beneficial and I found it great.”

• “If I enjoy doing the hobby, then great. If I don’t, I think about/imagine where I want to get to with the hobby, eg X, what level do I wanna play with it, whether I'd be happy/enjoyable by the time I get there. If no, I’d give it a few more days to see if i start enjoying it I think as we discussed it's mostly gut feeling. While embracing hardship as a way to grow definitely has advantages, I think it's also important to not be emotionally burdened/traumatised by these hardships. For me best case scenario would be to look back on those hardships with a smile, think "damn, this happened to me, I’m not happy it happened to me but I’m glad I got through it.”

• “I agree 100% with the hobby thing. I think hardship is unavoidable, and I don’t think the comfort zone model applies to all forms of hardship. The human journey is always epigenetic in nature; when we are faced with hardship, we are presented with two choices: confront or delay confronting. Hardship is a necessary step in an epigenetic journey. We can't always choose which zone to stay in. Some challenges will come to us on their own. The comfort zone model implies choice, whereby we choose to stretch ourselves. But sometimes we don't get that choice, we just have to grit our teeth, rationalise, and confront the challenge. We can only ever co-create our reality.”

My Opinion?

I think that you should trust your intuition, and listen to your heart and mind’s desire. Your heart, because that’s how you scan for passion. Your mind, because that’s what’ll have the clearest idea of what you’re doing. An important thing I realised is that we have to be honest with ourselves. In times of hardship, we have to think about if we’re being lazy or if we actually need to pivot. It’s important to not let discipline cloud judgement

One of the hard things about hard things is that you need to do them to grow.

That’s not to say that fate and destiny play a huge part as well. So many things are out of our control; one in particular is when we try something out, sometimes we don’t know if it will click or not. Fate and destiny will guide us through, and all we can do is to trust the journey and hold on for the ride. Be the best versions of ourselves; that is the certainty within the uncertainty.

“Most people give up on things way too early; the satire is 23 years-old, 14 startups after giving up. Most successful people have spent a lot of time grinding and not giving up. It should be an internal, not an external decision. If people aren't using it/people are saying it's bad, it's external. You want to pay some attention because it might have value but not too much.” - Sam Altman (paraphrased)

A popular author says that you should leave when: "You have no interest (unlike previous motivation), you would feel no regret leaving, you feel unburdened by leaving, you feel an increase in energy by leaving, or the project seems silly. Why do you want to do this?”

Sure, you could argue that Warren Buffet’s success was nurtured due to the insane effect of compounding. But Morgan Housel says that “Too much devotion to one goal, one path, one outcome, is asking for regret when you’re so susceptible to change.”

Another quote to think about is:

“If Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted, he would have been trying to breed faster horses.”

In the context of startups: “If you’re asking whether or not you should pivot, you know the answer already. People call me to ask if they have product market fit (PMF). The fact they have time to call tells me the answer. There’s no time for navel-gazing when it’s working. Admit when you don’t have PMF. If you can do that, then give yourself a fixed period of time to make it work. Spend 100% of your time on the thing that matters to see if you can move the needle. If that doesn’t work, start something new with a set deadline.” - Eric Ries

Lenny’s Podcast: A pivot can either breathe new life into your venture or serve as its last rites.

“If it starts to feel like a slog and you’re pushing yourself every day—I mean, we all have periods of that—but [do it] too long and that really becomes laborious. To me, it’s often a flag that perhaps you shouldn’t be in that area at all." — Dr. Julie Gurner

At the end of the day, well, who knows what we should be doing. There is no perfect life - we just have to make the best decisions we can in the moment, and let fate take control of the rest.

Yurui

“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” - Steve Jobs