The Upside of Quitting

Over the weekend I listened to Freakonomics’ Radio Show on The Upside of Quitting. Quitting has evoked such traumatic responses from me, which often involve too many glasses of wine or gin & tonics as I slowly arrive at the self-pitying conclusion that I can’t hack it. So many people are then forced to endure my lesser qualities, like insecurity, denial, and humorless diatribes for months on end. What’s usually been the case, though, is that I’ve landed in unhealthy work environments, surrounded by insecure, incompetent leaders and catty colleagues whispering about one another in cubicles.

Why I invested even more time and energy in those work places, rather than sprinting out the nearest exit, is beyond me. I suppose I felt that quitting meant failure. Winners never quit and quitters never win, right?

Well, Freakonomics suggests that, if you do want to quit, do so quickly and don’t look back. Don’t worry about what economists call sunk costs, or all the time, money, and emotion one has invested in a losing endeavor. Two years ago, my husband gave me the same advice as I tortured everyone around me about whether or not to leave the community clinic where I had invested four years of my life and way too much of my self-worth. But, for whatever reason, I needed a radio show to validate what my nearest & dearest friends had been telling me all along.

Unfortunately, this clinic was the Vietnam War of community clinics and my supervisor was its Ngo Dinh Diem. Pulling out should have been a no-brainer, but instead I rationalized why I should invest even more of my career and myself into that clinic. I’ve since watched two close colleagues go through the same internal conflicts and wage the same tortured arguments with their husbands, eventually making the decision to leave.

I’m not sure if we were too entrenched to let go. Maybe we felt that, if we allowed our marriages and families to come first (for once), we would be bailing on the patients and clinic’s mission. As hardworking Idealists, we each felt doubly lousy about quitting.

About three years ago, I put in so many hours at that clinic that an endless cold morphed into pneumonia. I was sick for three months because I couldn’t use any sick time to recuperate. There were too many grants to write, data queries to design, projects to manage, and reports to write. Around this time a close friend, probably watching my descent into the never-ending workload abyss, emailed a quote by Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace most easily succumbs: activism and over-work. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of the work because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes the work fruitful.”

I really like this quote. It gets right to the heart – and the heartache - of my internal struggle. I loved my job at that community clinic. I loved the mission. I loved the patients. I loved so many of my colleagues. I loved that I could combine my analytical, writing, and project management skills to make people’s lives better. But I also love my husband. I love being healthy. I love being sane. I love being able to look to my director and other leaders and know that both the patients’ needs and my personal life are in good hands.

So I left. And, when the next job didn’t pan out in the Competent Leadership & Healthy Workplace Departments, I left again – only this time I left much more quickly. Now I find myself on a sharp, dedicated team with a dynamic, highly-effective director who isn’t threatened by me when I do a damn fine job. Don’t get me wrong - the Idealist in me still yearns to be back in a community health clinic.

I’ll get back to community health: it’s in my DNA. But no more sunk costs or contemporary violence, please. When I return to community health, I’ll be a much stronger, healthier leader for having quit in October 2009 to find stronger leadership and healthier role models. My future is bright.