Five Projects I Buried Before They Buried Me

Hustle culture has a lot to answer for, but its worst crime might be this: it taught us that quitting is failure. That if you just pushed harder, woke up earlier, wanted it more, the podcast/course/merch line would finally work.

I bought into that for years. Then I looked at my task manager one Sunday and realized I was maintaining five zombie projects — alive on paper, dead in reality, each one quietly siphoning energy from the work that actually mattered.

So I killed them. Here's the graveyard, in all its glory, plus the red flags I now treat as stop signs.

1. The Podcast That Was Really Just Procrastination

The idea: a weekly interview show with creators and founders. I bought the mic. I designed the cover art. I recorded exactly two episodes.

The red flag I ignored: I loved planning the podcast more than making it. Every hour spent researching guest booking software was an hour not spent on the terrifying, unglamorous work of actually recording. If you find yourself endlessly preparing instead of producing, that's not thoroughness — that's avoidance in a productivity costume.

2. The Course Nobody Asked Me For

The idea: a signature course on content strategy. I outlined twelve modules. I told my email list it was coming. I even announced a launch date.

Then I noticed something uncomfortable: the questions my audience actually asked me had almost nothing to do with the curriculum I'd built. I was teaching what I wanted to teach, not what they needed to learn. The red flag: when your offer requires you to convince your audience they have a problem, you don't have a product — you have a pet project.

I killed it, refunded nobody (nothing had been sold, thankfully), and instead started answering their real questions in free content. That content performed better than any sales page ever would have.

3. The Merch Line That Was a Bank Account Leak

The idea: hoodies with my catchphrase. Cute, right? The sample arrived and the print cracked after two washes. The supplier wanted a 200-unit minimum for the reprint.

The red flag: I was doing math to justify it instead of math to evaluate it. "Well, if I sell 150 of 200..." is not a business plan, it's a hope. Merch only works when demand already exists. Mine didn't, and the $800 sample-and-shipping experiment taught me that lesson at a discount.

4. The Daily Vlog Era (It Lasted Nine Days)

The idea: daily vlogs to build parasocial connection. Everyone on YouTube said it was the growth hack of the year.

It lasted nine days, and honestly, nine days was too long. The red flag appeared on day two: I was filming my life instead of living it. I remember standing in my kitchen narrating my grocery haul and thinking, I don't even want to watch this. If the format drains the joy out of the very life you're documenting, no growth metric makes it worth it.

5. The Newsletter Rebrand That Almost Shipped

The idea: killing my newsletter and relaunching it under a whole new name and format. I'd drafted the announcement, picked the new name, even reserved the domain.

The red flag: the current newsletter wasn't failing — I was just bored of it. Boredom is a terrible business reason to blow up something that works. I shelved the rebrand, refreshed the existing format instead, and open rates went up. Sometimes the thing that needs fixing isn't the project. It's your itch for novelty.

How to Know When to Quit (For Real)

After five funerals, I've settled on three questions:

1. Am I doing the core work, or just the fun adjacent work? Preparation-heavy, production-light is a pattern, not a phase.
2. Has this project survived contact with my actual audience? If I keep postponing the moment real people see it, I already know the answer.
3. What would I ship this quarter if this project didn't exist? If the answer is something better, the project isn't a priority — it's a hostage situation.

Quitting well isn't the opposite of ambition. It's budgeting your one wild and precious attention span like the finite resource it is. Pour it into the two or three things that deserve to exist — and let the rest rest in peace.