The room in that unas­sum­ing, almost ugly office build­ing smelled like spilled beer and sweat. Con­crete walls, neon lights, cables run­ning along the ceil­ing, a cheap PA sys­tem hum­ming some­where in the cor­ner. Peo­ple leaned against each oth­er on fold­ing chairs, scrolling through their phones, wait­ing for the next per­son who would walk on stage and say the one thing we are all trained not to admit: »I failed.«

A guy steps into the spot­light. Hood­ie, sneak­ers, that slight­ly hunched pos­ture of some­one who has told this sto­ry too many times in his own head already. He clears his throat.

»I dumped two years of my sav­ings, count­less nights, and a pret­ty decent rela­tion­ship into that start­up,« he says. No trem­bling voice, no dra­ma. Just data. A time­line of effort and loss. »And then it died.«

Peo­ple laugh at the right points. They cheer when he men­tions the moment he final­ly pulled the plug. Some­one whis­tles. When he leaves the stage, they clap as if he had just pitched the next bil­lion-euro idea instead of a very pub­lic crash.

I sit in the sec­ond or third row, try­ing to make sense of what I’m watch­ing. Because this scene does not belong to the world I grew up in.

Where I come from, you don’t quit. You fin­ish school. You fin­ish your degree. You don’t just drop a job with­out lin­ing up the next three moves in advance. What you start, you com­plete. Out of prin­ci­ple. The idea of walk­ing on a stage to talk about some­thing you aban­doned? Unthink­able. That’s not a sto­ry, that’s a confession.

At t3n in Han­nover, I saw a lot of this start­up world up close: pitch events, inno­va­tion pan­els, and those famous »Fuck­up Nights« where fail­ure gets a kind of iron­ic halo. It looked cool from the out­side: founders laugh­ing about their own mis­takes, slides full of red num­bers, peo­ple clap­ping as if to say: »Look, we’re so mod­ern, we don’t fear fail­ure anymore.«

But even then, some­thing felt off. Fail­ure was either a dirty word or a badge of hon­or. There wasn’t much room for the qui­et mid­dle: that messy, pri­vate moment when you sit alone with a half-dead project and think: »Push through? Or walk away?«

That mid­dle is where my life is right now. Not on a stage. Not in a neat sto­ry. In a tran­si­tion. Things end­ing, things begin­ning, and me some­where in between with a head full of old rules about per­se­ver­ance and a grow­ing feel­ing that they may not fit anymore.

The Problem with »Never Give Up«

And just as this per­son­al plot twist unfolds, I stum­ble onto a meta-analy­sis in Nature Human Behav­iour, »A meta-ana­lyt­ic review and con­cep­tu­al mod­el of the antecedents and out­comes of goal adjust­ment in response to striv­ing dif­fi­cul­ties«, that basi­cal­ly says: some­times, the health­i­est thing you can do for your­self is to give up. »Nev­er give up« sounds hero­ic on a poster, but extreme­ly expen­sive in real life.

For a long time, my own inter­nal script sound­ed like this:

• Effort is always good.
• Stop­ping is a char­ac­ter flaw.
• If you suf­fer long enough, it will make sense in the end.

Nobody sat me down and taught me this as a the­o­ry. It was just there in the back­ground. The way adults react­ed when some­one switched stud­ies. The way peo­ple talked about »giv­ing up« on a job. The way stick­ing it out was praised even when nobody seemed to ask whether the thing we were stick­ing to was still worth it.

Psy­chol­o­gists have a word for the phase when that script starts to crack: an »action cri­sis« – the moment when you’ve already invest­ed a lot into a per­son­al goal, but repeat­ed set­backs and shrink­ing pay­off push you into a per­ma­nent inter­nal tug-of-war: con­tin­ue or dis­en­gage? In her work on goal reg­u­la­tion, Veroni­ka Brand­stät­ter describes action crises as exact­ly this con­flict between hold­ing on and let­ting go, com­bined with cost–benefit think­ing about the goal (for exam­ple in »Action cri­sis and cost–benefit think­ing«).

That moment is not just uncom­fort­able. Research shows it can be cor­ro­sive: peo­ple in an action cri­sis report more stress, more neg­a­tive emo­tions, more rumi­na­tion. It’s like hav­ing one foot on the gas and one on the brake for months.

And yet, we rarely talk about this as a skill ques­tion – as in: do you know how to get out of that lim­bo in a way that is good for you?

What the Science Actually Says About Giving Up

The meta-analy­sis I men­tioned – »A meta-ana­lyt­ic review and con­cep­tu­al mod­el of the antecedents and out­comes of goal adjust­ment in response to striv­ing dif­fi­cul­ties« – looked at 235 stud­ies on what hap­pens when peo­ple adjust their goals in the face of obsta­cles. That includes:

• Goal dis­en­gage­ment: let­ting go of a goal that no longer works.
• Goal reen­gage­ment: com­mit­ting to new, more real­is­tic or mean­ing­ful goals.
• Goal-striv­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty: adjust­ing how you pur­sue a goal instead of stub­born­ly repeat­ing the same strategy.

A few things stand out:

• Peo­ple who can dis­en­gage from unat­tain­able or over­ly cost­ly goals tend to report less stress, less anx­i­ety, and few­er depres­sive symp­toms than peo­ple who cling on no mat­ter what.
• Peo­ple who not only let go, but also reen­gage with new goals show par­tic­u­lar­ly strong links to greater well­be­ing, sense of mean­ing, and bet­ter day-to-day func­tion­ing. Ear­li­er work by Carsten Wrosch and col­leagues on goal adjust­ment capac­i­ties and qual­i­ty of life points in the same direction.
• The key isn’t ran­dom quit­ting. It’s adap­tive adjust­ment: notic­ing when a goal has turned into a sink­hole and hav­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal flex­i­bil­i­ty to pivot.

There’s an impor­tant caveat: most of these stud­ies are cor­re­la­tion­al. You can’t sim­ply say »quit­ting caus­es hap­pi­ness«. But the pat­tern is con­sis­tent enough across sam­ples, meth­ods, and life domains to make a strong case: peo­ple who are able to let go and reori­ent tend to do bet­ter in the long run than those who cling to impos­si­ble or painful­ly expen­sive goals.

If you want a more pop­u­lar read on this, there’s also a great piece in Nau­tilus, »The sur­pris­ing ben­e­fits of giv­ing up«, which dis­cuss­es the same line of research in acces­si­ble language.

The Sunk-Cost Trap: Why We Keep Throwing Good Life After Bad

You prob­a­bly know the basic sto­ry: you buy an expen­sive con­cert tick­et and then get sick on the day of the show. Ratio­nal­ly, you could stay home. The mon­ey is gone either way. But some part of you insists: »I have to go. Oth­er­wise the tick­et was wasted.«

That’s the sunk-cost effect: the ten­den­cy to con­tin­ue invest­ing time, mon­ey, or ener­gy into some­thing because you have already invest­ed – even when your chances of get­ting a decent return have dropped dramatically.

In one clas­sic sci­en­tif­ic paper, »The psy­chol­o­gy of sunk cost«, Hal Arkes and Cather­ine Blumer showed that peo­ple who had already paid more for the­atre tick­ets were more like­ly to keep attend­ing the plays, even when they no longer enjoyed them. Not because the plays got bet­ter. But because walk­ing away would have made the past invest­ment feel wast­ed. And that feel­ing — the sharp sting of imag­ined waste — is often pow­er­ful enough to over­ride both com­fort and com­mon sense, push­ing peo­ple to dou­ble down on choic­es they would nev­er make if they were start­ing from zero.

Behav­iour­al econ­o­mists have been wav­ing a giant flag about this for decades. On a pure­ly log­i­cal lev­el, sunk costs should play zero role in cur­rent deci­sions. They are, by def­i­n­i­tion, gone. What mat­ters are future costs and future ben­e­fits. And yet, as overviews like the entry on the sunk-cost fal­la­cy at BehavioralEconomics.com show again and again, humans real­ly, real­ly hate the idea of »waste«.

The twist is this: that same aver­sion to waste shows up in how we han­dle goals.

We stay in degrees we no longer want because we already invest­ed three years.
We keep drag­ging dead projects behind us because we once declared them part of our »future«. We hold on to roles, rela­tion­ships, iden­ti­ties because the exit fee, emo­tion­al­ly speak­ing, seems unbearable.

Put dif­fer­ent­ly: the sunk-cost effect is one of the rea­sons many of us are so bad at goal dis­en­gage­ment. Not because the goal still makes sense – but because its funer­al would force us to admit that all the time and effort we spent will nev­er pay off in the way we imagined.

The Action Crisis: That Awkward In-Between

That inner tug-of-war I men­tioned ear­li­er — the moment when you’re no longer sure whether to keep going or let go — is exact­ly what researchers call an action cri­sis. In her work on goal reg­u­la­tion, Veroni­ka Brand­stät­ter shows how this phase pulls your atten­tion away from pur­su­ing the goal and toward eval­u­at­ing it: Is the effort still worth it? Is the pay­off still real­is­tic? Or am I hold­ing on most­ly because I already invest­ed so much?

Action crises sit right at the inter­sec­tion of sunk costs and goal adjustment:

• You’ve already invest­ed a lot (hel­lo, sunk costs).
• You’re start­ing to notice that the equa­tion no longer adds up.
• But you haven’t ful­ly com­mit­ted to quit­ting or dou­bling down yet.

Stud­ies on action crises sug­gest that the longer you stay in this lim­bo, the more it hurts: more rumi­na­tion, more stress, more neg­a­tive affect, more doubts about your own com­pe­tence. At the same time, action crises can be a turn­ing point. They force you to ask the kind of ques­tion that the »nev­er give up« nar­ra­tive avoids: not »Can I endure this?«, but »Is this worth enduring?«

The meta-analy­sis on goal adjust­ment fits neat­ly into this: the abil­i­ty to use that cri­sis as data – to con­scious­ly eval­u­ate costs and ben­e­fits and, if need­ed, dis­en­gage and reen­gage else­where – seems to be linked to bet­ter men­tal health and functioning.

Okay, But How Do I Know Whether to Quit?

I wish I could give you a sim­ple flow­chart: »If X, then quit; if Y, then keep going.« The bad news: we’re not there yet. Even the big meta-analy­sis is cau­tious about claim­ing there’s one mag­ic tip­ping point where giv­ing up flips from cow­ardice to wisdom.

The good news: we do have enough research – and enough real-world expe­ri­ence – to build a set of reflec­tion tools that make your deci­sion more con­scious, less auto­mat­ic, and less dom­i­nat­ed by sunk costs.

Below you’ll find three exer­cis­es. They are not pro­duc­tiv­i­ty hacks. They’re slow tools. Use them when you notice the signs of an action cri­sis: the Sun­day dread, the »I just need to push a lit­tle longer« mono­logue that nev­er ends, the feel­ing that you’re liv­ing more in the fan­ta­sy of who you might be if this final­ly worked out than in the real­i­ty of your day-to-day life.

Exercise 1: The Brutally Honest Goal Audit

When to use it: when you’ve been pur­su­ing some­thing for a while and can’t tell whether you’re com­mit­ted or just trapped.

1. Pick one goal.
   Not your whole life. One thing. For exam­ple: fin­ish­ing your degree, keep­ing your cur­rent job, push­ing a side project, stay­ing in a lead­er­ship role, main­tain­ing a spe­cif­ic relationship.
2. Cre­ate a two-col­umn table.
   Label the columns »Costs (so far + real­is­ti­cal­ly ahead)« and »Ben­e­fits (so far + real­is­ti­cal­ly ahead)«
3. List only what’s real, not what’s promised.
   Under »Costs«, write down what this goal has already tak­en from you: time, mon­ey, ener­gy, men­tal health, oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties. Then add what it’s like­ly to cost you in the next 6–12 months if noth­ing major changes.
4. Now list what it’s actu­al­ly giv­ing you.
   Not what you hoped in year one. What it’s giv­ing you now: skills, rela­tion­ships, joy, sta­bil­i­ty, mean­ing, mon­ey. Then: what it is real­is­ti­cal­ly like­ly to give you in the next 6–12 months, based on evi­dence, not wish­ful thinking.
5. Ask the key question:
   »If I were look­ing at this as an out­sider, with no his­to­ry, would I tell this per­son to keep going?«

This exer­cise doesn’t tell you what to do. But it helps with one cru­cial thing: sep­a­rat­ing sunk costs from future val­ue. The moment you notice that most of your argu­ments for stay­ing are about the past – »I’ve already invest­ed so much« – you have a sig­nal that sunk-cost think­ing is in the driver’s seat.

Exercise 2: The 12-Month Time Machine

When to use it: when you sus­pect you’re stay­ing in some­thing most­ly out of habit or fear.

1. Imag­ine two ver­sions of your­self, 12 months from now.
   Ver­sion A stayed on the cur­rent path. Ver­sion B walked away and redi­rect­ed their effort into some­thing else.
2. Write two short scenes.
   A few para­graphs for each ver­sion. Where do they live? What does their day look like? How do they feel on a ran­dom Tues­day? What is bet­ter, what is worse?
3. Under­line the sen­tences that feel heavy.
   Mark the lines that give you a phys­i­cal reac­tion – a knot in your stom­ach, a tiny sense of grief, or relief.
4. Ask your­self:
   »If both options are hard in dif­fer­ent ways – which dif­fi­cul­ty feels alive, and which feels like slow­ly drain­ing out?«

This exer­cise uses oppor­tu­ni­ty-cost think­ing: every yes is a no to some­thing else. By explic­it­ly writ­ing out both futures, you give that »some­thing else« a chance to appear on the map.

Exercise 3: The Reengagement Map

When to use it: when you know you might have to let go of some­thing, but fear the void that follows.

One strong find­ing from the goal-adjust­ment research is that reen­gage­ment – com­mit­ting to new goals – is often more strong­ly linked to well­be­ing than dis­en­gage­ment alone. Let­ting go is the release; reen­gag­ing is the rebuild.

1. Draw three columns and label them:»Goals I’m cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing«, »Goals that feel heavy or stale«, and »Goals that qui­et­ly attract me«
2. Fill them with­out cen­sor­ing yourself.
   Big, small, seri­ous, play­ful. »Fin­ish book« and »learn to skate­board« can sit right next to each other.
3. Mark one goal in the »heavy or stale« column.
   The one that makes your shoul­ders tight­en when you think about it.
4. In the »qui­et­ly attract me« col­umn, cir­cle two or three things that could real­is­ti­cal­ly absorb the ener­gy freed up by let­ting go of that heavy goal.
5. Write one sentence:
   »If I stopped chas­ing X, I could start invest­ing in Y.«

The point is not to imme­di­ate­ly swap one big life goal for anoth­er. It’s to remind your ner­vous sys­tem that let­ting go does not equal »falling into noth­ing­ness«. There is always a »next«, even if it starts small.

Letting Go as a Life Skill

I still car­ry that old sen­tence with me: »What you start, you fin­ish.« Often, it has served me well. It got me through nights of work I would oth­er­wise have aban­doned too ear­ly. It helped me stick with things long enough to see them bloom.

But I’m also start­ing to notice the oth­er side: the projects that turned into slow-motion self-pun­ish­ment, the roles I held on to because I was more afraid of being seen as some­one who »gives up« than of wast­ing months, some­times years, in a sit­u­a­tion that did not fit anymore.

The sci­ence doesn’t say: »Give up more.« It says some­thing more sub­tle, and in a way, more demanding:

• Learn to read the moment when a goal has become a black hole.
• Learn to dis­tin­guish between pro­duc­tive per­sis­tence and self-destruc­tive stubbornness.
• Learn not just to stop, but to redi­rect – to reen­gage with some­thing that has a chance to give back.

Maybe the real matu­ri­ty test is not whether you can sit in a room full of peo­ple and tell them how hard you pushed before you crashed. Maybe it’s whether you can sit with your­self, qui­et­ly, and admit: »This is no longer worth what it’s cost­ing me.« And then change course before the crash.

That doesn’t make for a neat stage sto­ry. There may be no applause. No slides. No iron­ic jokes over drinks. Just a dif­fer­ent kind of dig­ni­ty: the one that comes from treat­ing your time, your ener­gy, and your life as resources you are allowed to protect.

If you find your­self in an action cri­sis right now – some­where between »stop« and »go« – maybe pick one of the exer­cis­es above and give it half an hour. You don’t owe any­one a hero­ic col­lapse. You’re allowed to fold, walk away from the table, and sit down at a dif­fer­ent game.