Stop, Pivot, Go! 🚥

In June 2020, I started a fitness instagram account (@thefitsingaporean) to grow an audience and community with the aim to educate the general population and demystify health and fitness myths.

3 months later, I decided to stop posting, and deactivated the account. I had grown my follower count by 62 people, and had posted a total of 84 posts. I posted consistently every single day at noon, and at 5PM (with the help of a scheduled posting platform). Things seem to be trending well, so why did I stop?

To manage content, I had to constantly be on Instagram

And I hated it.

1) Getting the the algorithm to work in your favour is tough. It’s not only about posting consistently with the right hashtags! You actually had to be on the platform, liking people’s photos and constantly commenting on other people’s content.

2) With a full time job, it was difficult keeping up with the posting schedule I had initially set for myself. I even reduced the frequency of posting from 2 posts a day to 1! I had also started to struggle to create content that I thought was truly meaningful for my audience. I did some research across the different fitness instagram accounts and was disappointed to find that majority of similar accounts actually re-posted the exact same content over a period of time. That didn’t sit well with me, and I felt that doing that would not represent a brand I truly believed in. The last thing I wanted to do was just repost stuff to get followers.

3) It goes against my personal belief of exposing myself to social media feeds all day. As many of you know, I actively avoid opening my Instagram app to improve and maintain my emotional well being. I’ve gone so far as to hide it in the app library on my phone so that it’s not within my reach on my iphone homepage (thank you IOS 14 🍎! ). These days, I only click into Instagram once or twice a day to look at a few stories from a few select friends, or to post a few stories of my own. The only reason I’m not properly off instagram is because I use it as a platform to post and advertise my articles and newsletters!

4) I discovered that Health and Fitness was not something I wanted to deep dive into (at least not at the level of how much I’m interested in productivity or life design (and that is also a story for another time).

After much deliberation, I decided to take some important advice from our good friend Ross:

So what did I do? I stopped investing my time on @thefitsingaporean, and instead doubled and re-invested my time and effort on other things!

I recall reading this book called The Dip by Seth Godin. Short, succinct but incredibly impactful.

I focused more on writing better quality articles for my website. I used the extra time to think of better topics, and refine my writing.

I focused more on making my newsletter better. I found more ways to market my content, and have them published on newsletter websites.

I invested in myself, and enrolled in the Building A Second Brain course to learn all about Personal Knowledge Management. I believe this was one of the best investments I have ever made on myself as the course has allowed me to dig deeper within myself to uncover a hidden interest of mine!

Pivoting, and doing all this has brought me so much more joy and happiness than to have stuck with what I had initially planned to do with @thefitsingaporean.

When you hit a roadblock and have thoughts about quitting, take a step back and re-evaluate. Have you been doing all you can to make it work? Is it worth your time and investment? Is it enjoyable? Most importantly, Is it sustainable, and do you still want to continue doing it?

Remember, if you decide to stop a investing in a project, it doesn’t mean you have failed. It simply means that you had the foresight to know when to stop.

Remember not to fall into the trap of the sunk cost fallacy! Just because you have already invested a certain amount of time in something, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t quit especially when you know it’s not working! After all, we do learn from these lessons, and we are most definitely stronger and wiser after! I’m glad that I had actually put in the effort to have tried doing this Instagram thing! I have mad respect for folks who build their entire business on instagram because it is a FULL TIME JOB and I can personally attest to that fact. Seriously. I don’t know how all these social media managers do it!

The last thing you should worry about is what other people think about it. You are the only person who will understand the reason and context behind your decision. Some people could see it as a failure, but I personally see it as a win. I knew when to stop investing precious time in something I knew deep down was not working, and was not sustainable for me to continue doing in the long run. Do what’s best for you, and ignore the noise :)

With this in mind, get ready to face the world head on, knowing that you are slightly better equipped to do so without feeling guilty about quitting!