Welcome to One Thing Better. Each week, the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine (that's me) shares one way to achieve a breakthrough at work — and build a career or company you love.
Today's edition is sponsored by UKG's HR & Payroll eSymposium, the best event for HR and payroll pros! More details below.
You've worked hard on something. Now you're stuck.
Maybe it's a promotion, a deal, or a relationship milestone. You've poured months or even years into it. But despite your best efforts, you're not getting there, and now it's holding up other decisions in your life.
You don't know what to do next. Keep trying? Give up? The uncertainty is paralyzing.
Today, I'll share a counterintuitive insight that might change everything: Sometimes, the best way forward is to imagine letting go. Because when you kill one hope, you often create space for a much bigger one.
But first, let me tell you about a woman facing this exact problem.
When hope becomes a trap
Suzanna has done great work at her company for years. Her boss thinks she's fantastic and has repeatedly tried to promote Suzanna. But the CEO always says no.
Suzanna knows why: She works at a small subsidiary of a larger company, and the CEO does not value her team's work.
"I don't know what to do," she told me. "I have big ambitions, and I feel stuck in place. But if I leave, I give up everything I've worked for here. Do I keep trying?"
In response, I said: "I'm going to say something difficult, and I don't know if it's true. But tell me where your mind goes."
Then I told her this: Suzanna, you are in a dead-end job. You've done everything you can, and you will never get the raise or promotion.
That should have been hard to hear. But you know what? Suzanna was not devastated. She immediately told me about other paths she'd considered, and her dreams of writing a novel. We started strategizing it all.
At the end of our call, she told me: "The most valuable thing you said was that I'm in a dead-end job. That allowed me to finally think about what comes next."
The power of walking away
Suzanna was stuck in a classic problem: Quitting feels scarier than staying.
So let's reconsider the meaning of "quitting."
Imagine being a teenager, and this is the rule of law: You must marry the first person you date.
What would you do? Well, you probably wouldn't date anyone!
In reality, we try and quit a lot of people.Quitting is how we reclaim the time, energy, and freedom to find the right person for us. The same holds true for everything else we explore.
"Every decision that you ever make is like dating," decision-making expert Annie Duke once told me. "You're dating ideas. You're dating projects. The reason why we can do these things, despite being so uncertain about them, is because we can walk away later."
Annie wrote a book called Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. It's very convincing. She argues that quitting isn't a bad thing; it's just a decision-making strategy. And sometimes, it's the solution to our problem.
How to know when to quit
Here's step one:
You must ignore your progress, and start assessing your momentum.
In other words: Forget how far you've come. Only look at whether you're still moving forward.
For example, imagine that I want to run through a brick wall. Here's my terrible drawing of this:
I stand 10 feet back and start running hard — and for those first 10 feet, I am sailing. Making great progress! But does that progress matter, once I've hit the wall?
You know the answer.
Now let's look back at Suzanna's problem. She told me four important things:
She does great work
Her boss values her
Her CEO won't reward her
Her CEO does not value her organization
Suzanna is focused on the first two elements — that she does good work, and that she has her boss's support. This is her progress, and she clings to it.
But if she's weighing her future, then her progress doesn't matter — because if the CEO does not value her, then she has no momentum.
That's why I wanted her to set progress aside. I wanted her to imagine the likely reality: This is a dead-end job.
And here's why that was important...
The worst thing of all is uncertainty
When I told Suzanna that she's in a dead-end job, consider what happened:
She's been living in uncertainty, unsure whether she'll grow at her company.
Then I handed her certainty — because once she knows the real situation, she can start making decisions.
When we feel stuck, and we cling to the hope that things will work out, we are actually clinging to uncertainty.
So here's my challenge to you: Try certainty on for size, even if it's hard or inconvenient. Imagine a world in which you don't succeed on your current path. It might be scary, but it will also be liberating. It hands the power back to you.
Now you can start deciding what comes next.
Now you can take back control.
Life isn't about waiting for Plan A to work. Life is making new plans yourself.
That's how to do one thing better.
If you work in HR or payroll...
What if one conversation could change how your C-suite or board hears you?
You'll find it at the upcoming UKG HR and Payroll eSymposium— a totally FREE event that brings together top-tier leaders and real-world expertise to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and impact.
Don't miss this featured session, Bridging the Communication Gap Between HR and the C-Suite, where Dr. Amy Dufrane, CEO of HRCI, and Rachel Barger, President, Go-To-Market at UKG, will share powerful success stories on how to align people strategy with business priorities, leverage data and AI to create compelling conversations — and tailor messaging to enhance your influence in strategic planning and decision-making.
Why attend?
Discover how to build leaders that inspire, boost team performance, and lead with trust using Great Place To Work For All™ behaviors
Plan a team building experience and network with leaders who share your goals and challenges
Earn up to 14 SHRM, HRCI, PayrollOrg, HRPA, CPHR-SK, and National Payroll Institute recertification credits
Register now — I spoke at this event earlier in the year, and was very impressed!
*sponsored
Final notes for today
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P.P.S. Miss last week's newsletter? It's about how to create a version of yourself that's always interesting, always impressive, and always on (read here).
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