So, why is it so hard to throw in the towel, even when on some level you know you should.’ For one thing, it’s embarrassing to admit to others that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, or that you’ve made an error of judgment. No one likes to be thought of as a ’quitter’. For another, quitting means accepting the unrecoverable costs—all the time and energy that you’ve already put into reaching your goal that you can never get back. Of course, once you realize that you probably won’t succeed, or that success isn’t worth the unhappiness your project is causing you, it shouldn’t matter what the unrecoverable costs are. If your job, your advanced degree, or your unfinished novel has taken up some of the best years of your life, it doesn’t make sense to give them even more years. That will only make you miserable.