When quitting is the best option? Abandoning one path for another may bring greater rewards. Far from failure, pivoting can lead to success.
I will give some nice examples of “positive quitting”.
Twitter started as a podcasting platform and pivot to become a social media with 140 characters, the same as SMS text. Today is 280. This video from one of the co-founders explains this change.
YouTube started as a dating website. The idea was for single people to make videos introducing themselves and saying what they were looking for. After five days no one had uploaded a single video, so the founders reconsidered.
Android started as a camera operating system. After they were acquired by Google, they repurposed the business to mobile handsets.
If they all stuck with their original vision, they probably wouldn’t be names that we know today.
Eric Ries, writer of the The Lean startup, explains this “time to change” as pivot, a change in strategy without a change in vision.
Some studies have found that people are best off when they not only abandon an unattainable goal, but choose another. Some of the world’s most successful people have proved that. Fashion designer Vera Wang began her career as a figure skater, then became an editor at Vogue. Alibaba founder Jack Ma applied unsuccessfully for dozens of jobs before he began designing websites. And Charles Darwin first studied to become a doctor, then a geologist.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin
When things are falling apart, they may actually be falling into place.