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Every so often I get stuck on the same question, and I’ve never fully answered it: do I keep going with this, or do I let it go? If you’ve ever poured yourself into a project - a startup, a piece of work, anything that mattered - I suspect you know the feeling.

I’ve read a lot of advice about it. Some people swear by perseverance: grit your teeth, push through, the breakthrough is just past the wall. Others swear by the pivot: be honest with yourself, cut your losses, point your energy somewhere better. I don’t think either side is wrong, exactly. It’s just that most of them are describing what worked for them, after the fact - and “what worked for me” turns out to be a hard thing to hand to someone else.

So I can’t offer you a rule either. What I can do is tell you about two times I landed on opposite sides of this, and the one thing I noticed in the middle of them that I keep coming back to. I’m genuinely curious whether it matches anything in your own experience.

When I stayed

Years ago, I worked on The Witcher 2.

It was the hardest stretch of work I’ve ever lived through, and honestly very little of it was about the work itself. We were doing seven days a week, eighteen-hour days, for months on end. The culture was difficult in ways I still don’t feel ready to lay out in full - so I’ll just say it took a real toll, and leave it there. There were plenty of mornings I genuinely didn’t know how I’d get through the day.

Every sensible rule I can think of now says I should have left. I came close more than once. But I stayed - not because I’d weighed it carefully, but because I couldn’t bring myself to walk away before it was finished.

And then it was finished. The Witcher 2 shipped. After everything it cost, there was something real on the other side of it: a game that existed, out in the world, with my work inside it. I’m still not sure the price was fair. But I’ve never once regretted having something to show for those months.

For a long time I took that as the lesson - stay, endure, and you’ll come away with something that lasts. Then I had an experience that pointed the other way, in a much gentler place.

When I left

A while later, there was Meta.

This time I tried to be disciplined about it. I decided up front what success would look like, watched the numbers as honestly as I could, and when they told me this wasn’t going to recover, I let go and moved on. The clean, responsible version of the decision, the one you’re sort of taught to feel good about.

And I came out the other side holding nothing. No artifact, nothing I could really point to. Just a line on a résumé and the memory of the hours I’d put in. I’d done it all the careful way, and somehow that was exactly what left me empty-handed. It surprised me at the time, and it stuck with me.

What I keep coming back to

So which one was right? I used to think that was the question, and I spent a long time trying to answer it. I’m no longer sure it has an answer. Sometimes leaving opened a door I’d never have found otherwise. Sometimes staying was the thing that paid off. I’ve never found a reliable signal that tells you, in the moment, which way to go - and I’ve slowly made peace with not having one.

But here’s the thing that does seem to hold, at least for me: when it was finally time to move on, what mattered most was whether I had something to show for the time I’d spent.

The brutal, should-have-quit stretch left me with a game that shipped. The careful, by-the-numbers exit left me with nothing. What made the difference wasn’t whether I stayed or left - it was whether I came away carrying something real. That’s the part the spreadsheets never quite captured for me.

Where I’ve landed, for now

So I’ve mostly stopped looking for the rule that settles it. I don’t think there is one. The right call depends on your runway, your health, the economy, the traction you’re seeing - and it genuinely seems to shift from one situation to the next.

What I try to do now is simpler. I keep a few honest markers so I don’t fool myself about how things are really going. I let myself walk away when something truly can’t be recovered. But the rest of the time, I lean toward staying long enough to come away with something real - something I can point to later, whichever way it ends up going.

That’s where I’ve landed, for now. But this is genuinely the part I care about most: I’d love to hear where you’ve landed. If you’ve stayed with something long past the point where it made sense - or walked away and never looked back - what did it leave you with? Was there a signal you trusted? Something you wish you’d known sooner?

Leave a comment and tell me. I read every one, and I’ll write back. I’m still working this out, and honestly the best thinking I’ve done on it has come from conversations like the one I’m hoping to start here.

Maybe staying versus leaving was never the thing to agonise over. Maybe the better question is simply: when this ends, what will I have to show for it? Tell me, I’d love to know.

(See also: The door I kept finding locked)