Column · when to stop
Write the sentence that would make stopping correct: "If I have not reached X by date Y, I stop." Written in advance, it is a plan. Written afterwards, it is an excuse.
An external event, not an internal feeling. A payment, a reply, a measured change. Internal states are too easy to reinterpret as progress.
Because of sunk cost, and because stopping requires admitting the earlier decision was wrong. Reframing helps: continuing is also a decision, made daily, and it has a cost too.
Reduce rather than abandon. Keep the artifact, drop the schedule. A project can be paused indefinitely without being declared a failure, which removes the emotional cost of the honest decision.
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