When to Get Out of a Failed Project, Such As a Republican Health Law
You will never get everything you want. It’s a hard truth, but if you don’t, you will be wasting your life on unrealistic, unnecessary projects: renovating your entire house, writing a novel, canceling and replacing Obamacare. Sometimes it’s time to give up, as Mitch McConnell did last night after two more Senators pulled out of support for a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act .
We have written extensively about the art of quitting smoking. It is laxative, productive and may even prolong life. Here’s the best Lifehacker advice.
In our most comprehensive layoff guide, Melanie Pinola listed ways to recognize a dead project: you experience more frustration than reward , you miss more important work , you stay for the wrong reasons, or your friends keep telling you to quit . You may have gotten out of control by supporting your project, telling your collaborators what they want to hear , and the truth befalls you:
McConnell tried to bridge divisions within his congregation by selling his plan to different people as different things. He could tell the archconservatives that the Ted Cruise amendment, which allows insurers to sell plans that discriminate against the sick, would deregulate the individual marketplace, where healthy and sick people would be segregated into different risk groups. And he can tell his dominant flank the opposite.
Even if you ignore all the signs, anything can spill your pipe dreams. Perhaps one of your core employees suddenly needed an operation that would cost one of America’s 29 million uninsured citizens to cost nearly $ 100,000 , so he can no longer help you keep those citizens uninsured.
Once you know it’s time to quit smoking, you need a plan. As entrepreneur Ahil Gupta wrote in Lifehacker, it’s important to make ends meet . If there are many other contributors to your project, it is irresponsible to give up everything, as, for example, Mitch McConnell promised to simply cancel ACA without replacement , leaving 22 million Americans without health insurance .
This part of my analogy is not entirely understandable, so I drop it and move on. See? It was easy!
Once you decide to quit a problematic project, you should already feel relieved. You will begin to count the benefits. You will have more time for other projects you have delayed, such as raising the minimum wage or empowering a powerless Office of Government Ethics .
You’ll learn to fail faster the next time. Maybe you won’t spend seven years on your next project. Seven years of fiddling with trust , seven years of false starts and false hopes . Seven years of struggle against one of the greatest achievements of Congress in the 21st century – a bill that grows more popular the longer the public feels its effects .
Maybe next time you won’t be fighting a losing battle until the other side moves on to promoting a single-payer healthcare system .
Another interesting benefit is that quitting smoking can be beneficial for your health, according to a 2007 psychological study . Who can afford to get sick these days?