Have you read those reports of people who would rather quit than go back to “but we’ve always worked this way”?

Maybe those reports are fake news. Or maybe “the way we’ve always worked” was fake. Maybe we are finally waking up. (No. I won’t use the latest in-word, the one that once meant “no longer asleep”.)

Maybe isolation and work from home have created new habits that are now too stubborn to break.

Maybe it’s none of the above. But thinking about it made me see another nonsense angle to my post of a few weeks ago (Are You Consistent or Stubborn?).

If at first you don’t succeed, trying again and again might be mere stubbornness. Society loves the underdog and cheers the ones who doggedly never quit. But how would you know when you risk crossing over from persistence to pigheadedness?

First, heed Einstein’s warning that insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. Next, check to see if your situation has changed. Trying the same thing in a different situation might well be a sane response.

Then check yourself. Maybe you have changed. Often everything is still the same, except you. Maybe you no longer have what it takes to make work what has always worked.

However, the real risk is that we keep trying for so long that we forget why we are trying in the first place.

When habit replaces logic, stubbornness makes nonsense of persistence.

Welcome to my side of the nonsense divide.