When It Seems Over

"There are times in a great career where things seem over and there seems to be no way to make it work. That is when something is about to happen."
(from my tweets, 2015)

I wrote several versions of this tweet. "Just when you think you have no chance. That is when you get your big break." "You can reason out a million reasons why something will go wrong. But you can never predict a miracle." And once: "If you seem unusually distraught for no apparent reason, that means that you are probably almost there."

It's an encouraging idea, and it isn't always true. Sometimes when things seem over, they really are. But there is research suggesting that setbacks can be turning points more often than we expect, and research on how to tell when to keep going and when to let go.

Near misses can make people stronger

In 2019, Yang Wang, Benjamin Jones and Dashun Wang studied early-career scientists who had applied for major grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. They compared two groups that were almost identical on paper: people whose applications scored just above the funding line, and people who scored just below it and were rejected.

You'd expect the narrow winners to pull ahead. Instead, over the next ten years, the near-miss group that stayed in science went on to publish papers that were, on average, more highly cited than the narrow winners' papers. Some of the near-miss scientists left the field, and that explains part of the difference. But the researchers concluded that the setback itself may also have strengthened those who kept going.

As they put it, what doesn't kill you may really make you stronger, at least sometimes.

We speed up near the finish

Another line of research helps explain why the end of a long effort can feel so intense. In a 2006 study, Ran Kivetz, Oleg Urminsky and Yuhuang Zheng studied a coffee shop loyalty program. Customers bought coffee more and more often as they got closer to earning a free one. The researchers called it the goal gradient effect: people put in more effort as a goal gets closer.

That may be part of why the last stretch of a big goal can feel so hard. We're pushing hardest, and the stakes feel highest, right when we're closest. My old tweet about feeling distraught when you're almost there may have had something to it.

Knowing when to let go

But persistence has a limit. Psychologists Carsten Wrosch, Michael Scheier and colleagues studied what happens when people face goals that really have become unattainable. In 2003, they found that people who were better able to disengage from such goals, and redirect their energy toward new ones, reported higher well-being and fewer symptoms of stress and depression.

So the healthiest attitude seems to be neither "never quit" nor "quit early." It's being willing to keep going through setbacks while staying honest enough to recognize when a goal no longer makes sense, and then putting your energy somewhere new.

What the philosophers said

The German poet and thinker Friedrich Hölderlin wrote a line in his poem "Patmos" (1803) that philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, returned to again and again:

"But where danger is, grows the saving power also."

Hölderlin wasn't promising that every crisis ends well. He was pointing to something about how change happens. The moment when the old way stops working is also the moment when something new can begin.

Some honest caveats

The grant study looked at a specific group, early-career scientists, and part of its result comes from who stayed in the field. The goal gradient study was about coffee rewards, not life goals. And there is a big risk of survivorship bias in stories of persistence, mine included. We hear from the people whose big break came. We hear much less from those who kept going and never got one.

Still, these findings suggest that a setback isn't always the end of the story, and that knowing when to keep going and when to change course are both skills worth having.

How to handle the moment when it seems over

• Don't decide at your lowest point. If you can, wait a few days before making a big decision to quit.
• Look for what the setback is teaching you. Near misses may make us stronger partly because they push us to improve.
• Remember the goal gradient. The hardest stretch is often near the end.
• Ask an honest question. Is this goal still achievable and still meaningful, or has it become something to let go of?
• If you let go, redirect. Put your energy into a new goal right away, rather than leaving a gap.

Today's reflection

Is there something in your life that seems over right now? What would it take to know whether it's a setback or a real ending?

Sources

• Hölderlin, F. (1803). "Patmos."
• Kivetz, R., Urminsky, O., & Zheng, Y. (2006). The goal-gradient hypothesis resurrected: Purchase acceleration, illusionary goal progress, and customer retention. Journal of Marketing Research, 43(1), 39–58.
• Wang, Y., Jones, B. F., & Wang, D. (2019). Early-career setback and future career impact. Nature Communications, 10, 4331.
• Wrosch, C., Scheier, M. F., Miller, G. E., Schulz, R., & Carver, C. S. (2003). Adaptive self-regulation of unattainable goals: Goal disengagement, goal reengagement, and subjective well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(12), 1494–1508.