One has to know when one should be persistent and patient, and when one should be pragmatic and realistic; stubbornly working away at a dead end is not the most efficient use of your time, and publishing every last scrap of your work is not always the best way to meet the standards of quality you expect from your publications (though sometimes it is still worth making your partial successes available in some format). Of course, in today’s digital age it is cheap and easy to backup all your work, and you should certainly do this before performing major surgery on any paper.
via Use the wastebasket « What’s new.
I’ve always had a problem with balance. In a sense excess, persistence or resignation has always been what I’m about, Always about extremes. Hope I can learn to regulate myself one day!