On Thursdays we Quit.
It's literally on my calendar, and is the key to success.
The Wink is my weekly essay exploring thought provoking topics in a quick cut format. Looking for deeper tracks? Meet me at The Dive on Thursdays. Craving a lighter snack? Catch me at Tiny Thrills on Tuesdays.
2 MIN. READ
Bob Goff — recovering lawyer and author of Love Does — quits every Thursday. Not dramatically. No resignation letter. Just… Something that had been quietly stealing space from things that actually matter? It’s vanquished. Weekly.
It is literally on his calendar to quit something Thursday after Thursday after Thursday.
“Meeting at 10 AM. Lunch at 12:15 PM. Pick up the dry cleaning. Quit something at 2 PM.”
I’ve been thinking about this nonstop.
Because my New Year resolution this year wasn’t to add anything. No new habit, no sunrise routine, no vision board with the word “abundant” on it. It was to delete. To have tunnel vision on what I already know I want, reflect on how I’d spent my time that did not get me closer to that thing, and cut it out.
We are addicted to adding. The self-improvement industrial complex is built entirely on this.
Here is an example: you’ve been lead to believe that it takes about three weeks to form a new habit. Nonsense. It takes much longer; two to five months! But just as you are clearing the first biggest hump around week three, you notice it’s not yet easy enough, you quit, thinking it didn’t work. Then, a few weeks or months later, you give it another shot, hoping to hop back on the self-improvement train. Buy the online course again. Book the motivational ticket again. Sign up for the gym again. They know you’re addicted to adding and so they convinced you to stop just as you were about to succeed, so that you’ll re-buy the product later.
We can flip the script on those marketing devils’ addiction to addition.
Bob Goff (and I, may I add) figured out, with characteristic simplicity, that the antidote to the hamster wheel is not addition. It’s subtraction. On a schedule. Relentless!
Every Thursday we ask: what can I quit? A committee joined out of obligation. A lunch date with the snarky friend. A project that made sense six months ago and doesn’t anymore. A hobby formerly loved but now utterly boring. Gone. More room for what you are actually here to do.
Think of the closet principle — applicable in life as much as fashion: you don’t make room for beautiful, intentional things by squeezing them in. You make room by clearing out what no longer fits.
Today is Sunday. We have four days to decide… What would you quit this Thursday?
xx B