In some fields, the worst type of encouragement may be to doggedly stick with projects until their completion.

Question: What is the worst career advice you have received?

Gary Small: Well I think that I can’t recall one specific experience that’s worse than another, but I think there is a pattern of advice I’ve been given that is probably the worst and that is often to stick with something perhaps longer than I should have. I mean I tend to take projects to their completion, but I think some of them if I had abandoned them a little earlier rather than later I would have saved a lot of time and energy.