Everyone talks about giving up as such a bad thing. And if you give up early, or before putting in a huge effort, then it’s even worse.
I think that’s because everyone compares quitting with NOT quitting. But it’s often more realistic to compare quitting now with quitting later. And in that context, quitting before you waste a lot of time and effort is the smarter move.
But then again, it’s not all about smarts. Lots of people would be smarter to quit, but are applauded for not. Rocky Balboa, in his first title fight, should have quit way early. He lost the fight anyway, but he could have saved a lot of blood. (I’m ignoring the rest of the Rocky movies here, in which he got a second title fight, even though, at the end of Rocky, both fighters agreed they didn’t want that.)
But of course, he SHOULDN’T have quit. Because his whole neighborhood and country admired that he took (and gave) a beating, even to lose, without quitting. So the blood loss, as long as it wasn’t fatal or permanently damaging, was a trade-off for social capital.
And I guess that’s where the whole “Don’t Quit” thing makes some small amount of sense. Don’t quit, because then you’ll be perceived as a quitter, which is bad in our society.
I don’t think quitting is necessarily bad. Obviously, quitting a bad habit (e.g. smoking, drunk driving, church, arson) is good. Quitting a venture before it turns from success to failure is also good. Many IT shops don’t get this. They’ll start down a path, and keep going no matter how painfully obvious the impending failure is, until they’re forced to quit. I’ve quit several jobs, any my only regrets have been that I generally did it later than I should have. Quitting is no more shameful than starting—it’s all in the context.