Happy Quitters Day
I've spent 51 hours doing something I should've just quit
Quick announcement up front: Season two is here and I’m now posting full episode summaries on Substack. If you want those in your inbox, flip the switch at newsletter.imperfect.club/account next to “Podcast Episodes”. If not, no worries, you’ll keep getting the same Friday emails.
I’ve published 17 podcast episodes so far. At a guess, each one takes me at least 3 hours to edit. That’s 51 hours doing the part of podcasting I strongly dislike.
Over fifty hours I could have spent having more conversations (the bit I truly love), writing, promoting the show, or literally anything else that brings me joy.
But hiring an editor costs money. So instead of investing anything to reclaim those hours, I’ve chosen to suffer through every single one of them myself. The “best” part is that I’m already paying for editing software. So I’m spending money on tools AND spending hours using those tools myself, when I could just... pay someone to do it and get my time back.
When I write it out like that, it sounds completely absurd. And yet that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the past year.
And that is what a limiting belief looks like in practice. A real decision to waste dozens of hours because “I’m not making money with the podcast, so spending more money on it feels unreasonable.”
Today is for quitters
Which brings me to the fact that today is Quitters Day. The second Friday of January, when most people abandon their New Year’s resolutions. I’ve been planning to write this post since July 2025 after reading Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff and learning about that special date. Back then, I even put this in my calendar:
In the book, she writes about running "tiny experiments" through pacts: you make commitments to try something for a set period, then reflect on the results. My version was: "Publish one podcast episode every two weeks for six months." January 9th became my Quit Day, a guilt-free checkpoint to ask: keep going, stop, or adjust?
I’m not quitting the podcast. I absolutely love having deep conversations with people about their work. But the editing is where I go to suffer. I’ve been stuck in a loop all year:
Love having the conversations and feel totally energised → Dread editing → Put it off → Deadline approaches → Panic & edit late → Tell myself I’m wasting money if I outsource → Suffer → Repeat
So my new experiment: I’m quitting editing and instead paying an editor for a few episodes. Hypothesis: My enjoyment goes up, my output increases, and the money isn’t a loss since it buys back time and sanity. We’ll see how the data looks in a few months. If you know a good editor, please let me know.
I hope you quit
It’s easy to treat quitting like failure when it’s actually just data. But search for “Quitters Day” online and you’ll see the same stuff everywhere: “How to stick to your resolutions,” or “don’t be a quitter.”
I disagree. I hope you quit. Quit the stupid, obvious thing that you know is making you miserable but you’re holding onto for reasons that don’t make sense when you say them out loud.
Or at least set Quit Dates in your calendar for whatever experiments you’re running. Give yourself permission to check in and ask: is this still working?
And if you’ve already abandoned something and feel guilty about it, don’t. Run the experiment properly: ask what you learned, why you want to quit, and what you might want to try instead.
You may as well get some good data out of it. That’s just good experimental design.
On the podcast
Season two kicked off with a wonderful chat with Rick Foerster. It was a true pleasure to talk to Rick, and he did a better summary than me, so I’m stealing his words. We talk about:
Why the best work is work you’d pay to do
The unsexy reality of how creative work actually gets funded (spoiler: by something else)
Why grasping for “the next thing” leaves you worse off
Why he’s not latching onto his new identity of “writer”
Read more highlights here or watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Good stuff this week
A few great things I read this week:
6 months later: A sabbatical reflection - christineist. A really awesome, honest and detailed look into the reality of a sabbatical that shows what an experimental mindset looks like in real life.
How To Manufacture Luck - Rules for engineering serendipity by Polymath Investor.
10 things I’d tell you about Substack if I wasn’t afraid to hurt your feelings - Anna Seirian - Not new, but great advice I found myself nodding along to for anyone looking to post regularly here on Substack.
The Best of World Builders ('25 Edition) - Nathan Baugh. Worldbuilders is awesome and I believe storytelling is an essential skill. So much good stuff in here!
And finally, I can’t stop thinking about the idea of “unclenching” (yes, seriously):