Don’t Burn Bridges for Motivation

Irreversibility sometimes creates resolve. That is exactly why people quit before looking for a new job, put all their money into a project or publicly promise a result.

Once the ways back are closed, the only option left is forward.

The trouble is that forward may lead nowhere.

Keeping a line of retreat is useful until the new system has proved it works:

• start the training before resigning;
• test demand before taking a large loan;
• live in the new city before buying a home;
• run a small project before founding a company;
• try training regularly before buying a home gym.

Large up-front spending is a poor substitute for motivation. An annual membership does not make you train. It merely makes skipping a session slightly more expensive and creates an extra reason to avoid the bank statement.

Still, a prior commitment is sometimes useful:

• a paid course;
• a fixed date;
• an agreement with a coach;
• an announced meeting.

The difference is in the size of the stake.

A good commitment helps you start and leaves room to change your mind without wrecking your life. A bad one deliberately makes an error too expensive to admit.

A burned bridge has a side effect the quotations about resolve leave out: it prevents not only retreat but also noticing that it is time to retreat. A person who announced to forty acquaintances that he is going into business for himself acquired, along with the resolve, an expensive reputational stake. Six months on, the numbers already say “this isn’t working”, but admitting it now means explaining to forty people what went wrong. The project is dragged on for another year — not out of belief in it, but out of the bookkeeping of shame.

A good test of a commitment is to ask what it does to the moment of quitting. If it makes that moment slightly uncomfortable, it is discipline. If it makes it impossible, it is a way of forbidding yourself new data in advance.