Introduction
This is a personal reflection, but since it’s the year-end and New Year period, I’ve been reviewing the tools I use regularly and my daily habits. Through that process, I was once again reminded of a simple fact: quitting something is often harder than starting it.
In my case, I’m fairly good at cutting off things I clearly recognize as “bad,” such as harmful habits or tools that have obviously become unproductive. The reason is straightforward: if something is clearly not good to do, I can decide not to do it without much hesitation.
What I find much more difficult, however, are things that once genuinely benefited me, things that still seem to have some partial value, or things that have already gained momentum and become ingrained habits.
Because these are not things I can label as “completely bad,” judgment becomes ambiguous, and I often lose sight of the right time to stop. Should I cut them off, or should I continue? Even when I think I’ve sorted it out rationally, emotions and past investments quietly intervene in the decision.
Today, I want to focus on why “things that were once good” are especially hard to quit, and to analyze and summarize why the act of quitting itself so easily becomes difficult. This is also an exercise in self-reflection for me. Since this is based primarily on my own analysis, it may lack objectivity, but I hope it might still be useful to someone. If this sounds interesting to you, I’d be glad if you read on.
Why Are “Good Things” So Hard to Quit?
To make this easier to understand, let’s start with a concrete example.
I’ll use language learning as an example.
Imagine that you started online language learning after deciding to study abroad.
From before your departure through shortly after returning home, you could clearly feel your language skills improving. There’s no doubt that the online learning was effective.
After returning home, however, opportunities to use that language in daily life almost disappeared. Even so, you continued the online learning, thinking, “I don’t want my hard-earned skills to fade,” or “I might use this again for work in the future.”
As a result, you managed to maintain your language ability—but you rarely used it in real life. Meanwhile, you continued paying a monthly subscription fee and spending a consistent amount of time studying.
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This situation cannot be called a failure. After all, your language ability was maintained, and the learning itself was not pointless.
Still, a subtle sense of discomfort begins to emerge.
- Is this learning really necessary in my current life?
- Would it be better to spend this time and money on something else?
Even while thinking this way, it’s hard to actually make the decision to quit.
The Moment When the “Reason for Continuing” Quietly Changes
There is another factor that makes quitting even harder.
It’s when the reason for continuing slowly shifts without us noticing.
At the beginning, there was likely a clear reason:
- “This makes me more efficient.”
- “This habit helps me stay in good shape.”
Over time, however, those reasons gradually change.
- I’ve already gotten used to it.
- It would be a hassle to change now.
- Quitting feels like I’d be losing something.
At this point, the justification for continuing is no longer rooted in the future, but in the past. Yet subjectively, it still feels like a rational choice.
This mismatch makes it even harder to recognize the right time to stop.
People also tend to think things like:
- “There was a time when this really helped me.”
- “This is what helped me move forward.”
Those memories strongly influence how we evaluate things in the present.
The problem here is that we unconsciously confuse past value with current value. Although these should be considered separately, they become tightly linked in our minds.
As a result, even if we sense that “this might no longer fit my current situation,” the memory of “but it was good back then” acts as a brake.
Conclusion
My current answer to this kind of problem is simple:
to objectively judge what should and should not be done based on my present values.
One reason these dilemmas arise, I believe, is that personal cognitive tendencies play a large role. In my case, facts such as:
- it was effective,
- it once helped me,
- it’s not completely meaningless even now,
seem to influence my judgment unconsciously.
However, when I look back at goals I set several months or a year ago—things I once thought I should be doing—I often realize that they’re off the mark or already outdated from my current perspective. Even habits that take just ten minutes a day or one hour a week can accumulate into a significant amount over time. If such habits no longer align with who you are now, they may ultimately become a major loss in your life.
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This was a relatively short article, but I wrote it as a kind of personal memo. Since it’s not easy to generalize (and might not be very relatable for everyone), it may not be perfectly organized. If anything was unclear, I apologize. Thank you very much for reading!
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