Damien Soitout
How to decide whether to stay with a work or a practice. Staying is not a trophy. Ask whether the work should continue.
Staying is a decision at a gate. It is about the work, not about a prize for having remained.
Staying is a decision. People talk about it as if it were a personality, or a prize you get for not flinching. On 23 July 2026 the question I want in front of you is narrower. Should this work continue. The work can be a job, a practice, a book you are finishing, a client you keep serving, or a standard you have held for a long time. It is not an address. It is not a count of years in a place. It is not a medal.
I have stayed with work that was right, and I have left a pace that still paid. Those are different decisions, and they get confused because both of them feel like loyalty. Loyalty to a pace that is hurting you is not loyalty to the work. “How to leave a pace that still pays” is the cornerstone under this question. Leaving is allowed. Staying is allowed. What is not allowed, if you want a clean decision, is to treat either one as proof that you are a serious person.
The week after you decide is its own problem. “What to do in the week after you decide” is the cross. If you stay, that week should look like the work, not like a speech about having stayed. If you leave, that week should look like the next plain tasks, not like a new identity. The decision is the gate. The week is the path. Do not decorate the gate and then forget to walk.
The first question is whether the work still does the thing it was for. A practice that was meant to make you competent should still be making you more competent, even when it is dull. A job that was meant to serve a customer should still have a customer you can name. A standard you kept so other people could rely on you should still be visible to those people on an ordinary Tuesday. If you cannot point at the thing, you may be staying for the portrait of yourself as someone who stays.
“5 signs you're already moving forward” helps because motion is evidence. Forward is not a mood. It is a page finished, a person taught, a defect removed, a client who received what they were owed. If the last month has none of that, staying is a hypothesis, not a fact. You can still choose it. You should know you are choosing a hope.
“Increase your self-awareness and emotional choice” is the inner half of the same test. The feeling of restlessness is data. It is not a verdict. The feeling of pride in having endured is also data, and it is often worse data, because pride likes to call itself duty. Write down, in one sentence, what you would be afraid to lose if you stopped. If the sentence is “the work the other person depends on,” you are looking at the work. If the sentence is “the story of me as the one who never quit,” you are looking at an image. Images are expensive to maintain and they do not ship.
I am strict about this because I have watched the question rot. Someone asks whether to stay, and the conversation slides into where a person sleeps, how many years they have been somewhere, or whether endurance deserves a public compliment. None of that answers the work. A practice can be continued in any room. A job can be left without a speech about geography. The decision travels. The trophy does not, because there should not be a trophy.
There is a sentence I have put on this site about a partner and a firm: she would run the work either way. The piece is “Valeriia Akatova is my wife. She would run Foundation either way.” I am not retelling it here. I am using the shape. The work continues because the person can do the work. A private bond is not the source of the authority, and a long stay is not the source either. If you are deciding whether to remain in a role, ask whether you would still be the right person to do it if nobody were clapping, and if the calendar gave you no credit for the years.
How to overcome failure belongs next to that question, and it has been on this site since December 2021. Failure is one reason people freeze in place. They stay because leaving would look like the failure became official. The failure, if there was one, is already in the work. Staying does not hide it. Leaving does not announce it to the world unless you announce it. Overcome the thing, or stop the thing. Do not use your body as a monument to the month it went wrong.
Give the decision seven days, and make the seven days boring. Day one: write the job of the work in a sentence a stranger could check. Day two: list what you actually did in the last ten working days, not what the role is called. Day three: name the person, if there is one, who is worse off when you are careless. Day four: name the part that is a pace rather than a duty. A pace is the speed, the performance, the hours that continue because they have been continuing. A duty is the outcome someone can receive. Day five: ask what would remain if you cut the pace in half and kept the duty. Day six: sleep. Tired people vote for the familiar. Day seven: say stay or stop, out loud, to one person who will not turn it into a brand.
The MedlinePlus page on stress is worth reading before day six, not as a diagnosis and not as a personality test. Stress changes the vote. People under a long load choose the option that reduces today's noise, which is often “stay and complain” or “leave and vanish.” Neither is a decision about the work. The NHS tips on stress are small on purpose: sleep, movement, a limit on the stimuli. Use them so the seventh day is yours. The Health and Safety Executive's pages on stress at work put the same problem on the employer's side. If you are the one who employs, a person deciding whether to stay should not have to do it inside a system that treats exhaustion as commitment.
“Activities to keep your brain sharp” is the odd title in this set, and it earns its place. A foggy week produces a romantic decision. Walk, read, do the ordinary thing that brings the mind back, and then judge the work. I do not trust a resignation, or a vow to remain forever, that was written at midnight after a bad meeting. I trust the sentence you can repeat on a rested morning.
Staying without a change is how a wrong pace gets another year. If the duty is real and the pace is the problem, the decision to stay has to include a cut. Fewer hours of performance. A clearer owner for the part that is not yours. A meeting removed. A standard written down so you are not the only person who remembers it. “How to say what the long work was for” is the later piece, about the sentence you can hand someone after a long stretch. You do not need that sentence on day one. You need it eventually, or the stay becomes a blur you defend out of embarrassment.
If you are staying because the money is real and the work is also real, say both. Money is a fact. It is not a moral. “What to do in the week after you decide” will tell you to give that week a few plain tasks. One of them, if you stay, is to tell the other person what will be different on Monday. If nothing will be different, you did not decide. You paused.
If you lead people, do not praise staying as such. Praise the work that was done. A culture that applauds endurance will fill up with people who are enduring a mess you should have fixed. Keep the ones whose work you would still choose. Let the trophy case stay empty.
Stopping a practice is not a confession that the years were wasted. The years taught you the difference between the duty and the pace. You take the difference with you. You do not owe the old pace a funeral, and you do not owe strangers a new address for your life. The next week is tasks. Close the loop with the person who depended on the duty. Leave the pace on the table.
I use this on my own work, including the long work of writing and the long work of operating. Some of it should continue because a reader, a client, or a partner can still use it. Some of it should stop because it only proves that I can keep going. On 23 July the question is open for anyone. Should the work continue. Answer that. Do not answer with a prize, a place, or a count of years. Then give the next week a shape that matches the answer.
