cease and desist

I have yet to master the art of knowing when to stop. The more I think about it, the
more examples I can think of in my life where I could have spared myself some trouble if only I had stopped what I was doing sooner.

For some reason, the strongest example if this in my mind goes back to my A-Level Chemistry classes and titrations. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we did titration after titration until we were all completely paranoid about overshooting the tests.
For those who don't know, titrations are tests where you add one reagent to another drop by drop until a chemical reaction occurs. Usually the colour of the initial reagent turns colour when the reaction has happened - and the intensity of the colour indicates the extent of the reaction.
In a lot of the experiments we did, if your solution went bright pink, then you had overshot and this screwed up the calculations afterwards. one of my most vivid memories of Chemistry class is holding a conical flask of pink bubblegum coloured solution :(

I can think of other examples. Right now for instance. I have been heavily coding most of the afternoon, about 40 minutes ago everything was compiling nicely. I could have called it a day and gone home at 6pm but I decided to do a little more work - perhaps finish it off so I can test tomorrow. Now it's no longer compiling and I am too tired to try and fix it... Yet I hate to go home and leave things like this
because it means that I will have to fix it tomorrow before I do anything else.

Another example? Many a night sitting at a poker table in the casino, having won some money. Decided to continue and ended up losing it all :(

Yet another example? Lol. My second driving test. Whilst performing my 3 point turn manoevre I had already reversed and all I needed to do was to put the car in 1st gear and drive away. For some reason, I had gone through all the motions in my head and thought that I'd changed gear...
so foot on the accelerator and I wondered why the car wasn't moving. Should have stopped there and thought about it but stupidly I gave it a little more on the gas and the car ended up on the kerb :P
Just a little mind. And there was a spindly tree right in the way to make things even more stupid! Luckily I was quick to react and immediately 'fixed' the problem but the damage was done and I failed the test 10 minutes into it. *Sigh* Still had to take the rest of the test. My driving instructor was very nice about it despite having scratched his brand new paintjob.

I could probably go on. But I think I might go home instead :)