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"It's not giving up, it's disengagement." If you set out to do something and stop doing it before you've succeeded, even though you could carry on with at leas

"It's not giving up, it's disengagement." If you set out to do something and stop doing it before you've succeeded, even though you could carry on with at least some possibility of further and future success, calling it anything other than "giving up" is just sugar-coating it. I'm sure it's sensible and wise to give up in many circumstances, but giving it a fancy name really shouldn't be part of the process of justifying that decision.

scott_s 11y ago
The quoted sentence is the summation of an article trying to distinguish between quitting because you can't do it, and quitting because you no longer care. Focusing on the renaming aspect is taking it too literally; that's just a rhetorical device.
- noxToken 11y ago
  Wholeheartedly agree. It may just seem like it's sugarcoating it, but there is definitely a difference in changing focus and just giving up. Saying something other than, "I just gave up on it," (which is what quit generally implies) gives more a story behind why. Side projects come to mind when I think of quitting. Sometimes the project becomes much bigger than what you expected. You and your buddy don't have the time nor resources to dedicate towards seeing it through or scaling it up. It really all depends on the situation.
derplederple 11y ago
I live in a world where people have the capacity to make more informed decisions as time moves forward and they gather more information about both the world and their own self. That is, people know themselves better at a later point in time than they did before (but it is entirely possible these reverse) and they have a different set of options because the overall state of the world tends to vary with time. If you make a goal at time t1 and decide at t2 that that goal was a hasty and thoughtless goal, then I think the person you are at t2 should be the person you evaluate yourself as, rather than clinging to statements you might have uttered in the past. Black and white thinking of "success / failure" is a good way to make sure everything in your life goes exactly as planned, while wearing blinders. You need a combination of both in order to really be successful. Being mean to yourself doesn't necessarily lead to success. If you've only got a mile left in the marathon and you've already ran 25, yes, that extra mile is kind of important, but also, no, it really isn't.

scott_s 11y ago

The quoted sentence is the summation of an article trying to distinguish between quitting because you can't do it, and quitting because you no longer care. Focusing on the renaming aspect is taking it too literally; that's just a rhetorical device.

noxToken 11y ago
Wholeheartedly agree. It may just seem like it's sugarcoating it, but there is definitely a difference in changing focus and just giving up. Saying something other than, "I just gave up on it," (which is what quit generally implies) gives more a story behind why. Side projects come to mind when I think of quitting. Sometimes the project becomes much bigger than what you expected. You and your buddy don't have the time nor resources to dedicate towards seeing it through or scaling it up. It really all depends on the situation.

derplederple 11y ago

I live in a world where people have the capacity to make more informed decisions as time moves forward and they gather more information about both the world and their own self. That is, people know themselves better at a later point in time than they did before (but it is entirely possible these reverse) and they have a different set of options because the overall state of the world tends to vary with time. If you make a goal at time t1 and decide at t2 that that goal was a hasty and thoughtless goal, then I think the person you are at t2 should be the person you evaluate yourself as, rather than clinging to statements you might have uttered in the past. Black and white thinking of "success / failure" is a good way to make sure everything in your life goes exactly as planned, while wearing blinders. You need a combination of both in order to really be successful. Being mean to yourself doesn't necessarily lead to success. If you've only got a mile left in the marathon and you've already ran 25, yes, that extra mile is kind of important, but also, no, it really isn't.