As a (somewhat-reticent) follower of pop culture, I was saddened to read that the family of veteran actor Bruce Willis announced he is “stepping away” (aka retiring) from his 40-year acting career due to his diagnosis of aphasia.

I’m not a medical expert but I do know that, other than a traumatic brain injury or stroke, aphasia—like other cognitive issues—doesn’t happen overnight. So, I wasn’t surprised to read subsequent reports that for several years, accommodations had been made for Willis’s communication problems. These accommodations ranged from shortening his lines to having his lines recited to him via an earpiece.

I also read about a successful architect who retired after his supervisor raised concerns about his poor work performance. Shortly thereafter, the architect was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. These two examples (and many more) beg the question: when is the right time to call it quits?

Why Stay?

If you’ve spent any time in the workplace, you’ve likely concluded that some people overstay their usefulness. For a variety of reasons, certain employees hang onto jobs longer than is good for the organization, their constituents and probably their own happiness. Perhaps economic constraints or inertia overrode their impulse to call it quits.

One doesn’t need to experience cognitive decline or petrification to ask the question: when should I throw in the towel? During the Great Resignation, millions decided that NOW was the right time to quit. But walking away from a job isn’t always easy and is complicated by a number of factors, income being one of them.

Many years ago, I met a woman in one of the many self-improvement workshops I attended, who confided in me that her hefty trust fund was somewhat of a curse. When she hit a rough patch in a job, she quit without looking back. At the time, when I was scraping by financially, I had a hard time being empathic but I later understood the toll this took on her self-esteem. She left jobs without resolving her issues. Her jobs always ended on a down note.

What I know for sure is that giving up too soon on a relationship—work or personal—can have lasting detrimental effects on one’s confidence. I once left a job without trying to mend a fractured relationship I had with my supervisor. I didn’t leave the job specifically because of my supervisor (it’s never just one thing) but no tears were shed on either side when I turned in my resignation. Although I don’t wish I had stayed, I do wish I had used my skills to leave on better terms.

None of us should stay in an abusive or toxic environment, whether at work or home. If work is having a negative impact on one’s emotional and/or physical well-being, it’s time for change. Just short of being depleted, however, making attempts to improve one’s work life is worth the effort.

Job Crafting

The term job crafting was introduced in 2001 by researchers Jane Dutton and Amy Wrzesniewski. Job crafting is a bottom-up, individualized approach to improving job satisfaction by changing what we can and accepting what we can’t.

Job crafting requires a belief that we can make changes—that we have agency. By identifying the areas that cause the most distress, an employee can begin to alter responsibilities, relationships and, most importantly, shift one’s attitudes and perspective. The challenge in job crafting is knowing what’s important and being proactive and courageous enough to propose changes.

When I was a high school counselor one of the most distasteful responsibilities that was thrust upon me was coordinating and administering the state tests that were instituted as part of the No Child Left Beyond movement, which many of us renamed No Child Left Untested.

The counselors banded together and organized an insurgency. We offered to supervise a small group of hired clerical staff to perform the tedium involved in test administration. This was accomplished by clarifying our roles and presenting a solution, not by whining.

Endless examples exist of how employees reshaped their jobs to improve job satisfaction. Often our work relationships last longer than our respective jobs and they’re what sustain us during tough times. Deliberately cultivating supportive relationships is another way to job craft.

Knowing what needs changing is at least as important as knowing when to quit. In an ideal society, work environments promote meaning and purpose. In our less-than-ideal situations, we must create our own meaning and purpose.

Relationship Crafting

I write a monthly advice column in StepMom Magazine. About every fourth question I receive raises the same quandary about when to throw in the towel. Aside from abuse, this is a tricky one to answer for oneself and certainly for anyone else.

Although we don’t have a term like job crafting to use for relationships, the concept of relationship crafting happens every day as partners adjust their expectations and their behaviors in order to survive and thrive in the partnership.

A client recently quoted me as having said that the time to call it quits is when one person in the relationship stops trying. Although I don’t remember saying this, the sentiment rings true for me. Working on a two-person relationship when one person has bailed emotionally is difficult.

Ending a personal relationship only after all remedies have been exhausted to improve the dynamics makes sense to me. When you’ve tried your level best to make the situation better, you can walk away with your self-esteem intact. At the end of the day, all that really matters is the knowledge that we worked to preserve our self-respect and aided others in preserving theirs.

“There's a difference between quittin’ and knowin’ when you're beat.”

—Cormac McCarthy