I wonder if the inverse rule for this is “how to know when quitting is more effective than trying” - because I think that often times, and especially for folks who can be incredibly persistent when they put their mind to something, it’s helpful to have a cost benefit analysis of your efforts and it might just be that in more cases than not, just not trying actually resolves the core problem your trying to solve.
I really enjoyed this article and it really resonated with me, which made me wonder if it is actually an evolutionarily selected solution in a way - like that ignoring something turns out to be a surprisingly effective form of triage for many situations? Obviously the cases where this doesn’t hold are what the article is addressing but I found it fascinating to think about why that approach might be so common.