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Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away
From the bestselling author of Thinking in Bets comes a toolkit for mastering the skill of quitting to achieve greater success
Business leaders, with millions of dollars down the drain, struggle to abandon a new app or product that just isn't working. Governments, caught in a hopeless conflict, believe that the next tactic will finally be the one that wins the war. And in our own lives, we persist in relationships or careers that no longer serve us. Why? According to Annie Duke, in the face of tough decisions, we're terrible quitters. And that is significantly holding us back.
In Quit, Duke teaches you how to get good at quitting. Drawing on stories from elite athletes like Mount Everest climbers, founders of leading companies like Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, and top entertainers like Dave Chappelle, Duke explains why quitting is integral to success, as well as strategies for determining when to hold em, and when to fold em, that will save you time, energy, and money. You'll learn:
How the paradox of quitting influences decision making: If you quit on time, you will feel you quit early
What forces work against good quitting behavior, such as escalation commitment, desire for certainty, and status quo biasHow to think in expected value in order to make better decisions, as well as other best practices, such as increasing flexibility in goal-setting, establishing "quitting contracts," anticipating optionality, and conducting premortems and backcasts
Whether you're facing a make-or-break business decision or life-altering personal choice, mastering the skill of quitting will help you make the best next move.
Business leaders, with millions of dollars down the drain, struggle to abandon a new app or product that just isn't working. Governments, caught in a hopeless conflict, believe that the next tactic will finally be the one that wins the war. And in our own lives, we persist in relationships or careers that no longer serve us. Why? According to Annie Duke, in the face of tough decisions, we're terrible quitters. And that is significantly holding us back.
In Quit, Duke teaches you how to get good at quitting. Drawing on stories from elite athletes like Mount Everest climbers, founders of leading companies like Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, and top entertainers like Dave Chappelle, Duke explains why quitting is integral to success, as well as strategies for determining when to hold em, and when to fold em, that will save you time, energy, and money. You'll learn:
How the paradox of quitting influences decision making: If you quit on time, you will feel you quit early
What forces work against good quitting behavior, such as escalation commitment, desire for certainty, and status quo biasHow to think in expected value in order to make better decisions, as well as other best practices, such as increasing flexibility in goal-setting, establishing "quitting contracts," anticipating optionality, and conducting premortems and backcasts
Whether you're facing a make-or-break business decision or life-altering personal choice, mastering the skill of quitting will help you make the best next move.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2022
1,424 people are currently reading
15.6k people want to read
About the author
Annie Duke
13 books743 followersAnnie is the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit whose mission is to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education. She is also a member of the National Board of After-School All-Stars and the Board of Directors of the Franklin Institute. In 2020, she joined the board of the Renew Democracy Initiative.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 727 reviews
October 13, 2022
Quickly reviewing the reviews, I am not certain that every reader focuses on the real point of this book. It is a good book that explores some old terrain, covered in a new way, and some new terrain that is important for those of us making commitments of one sort or another.
It is by no means, as one reviewer suggested, a self-help book. Ms Duke is too much of a scientist for that. Should recognition of one more component of decision making help us? Of course. But I don't think Ms Duke set out to write a best selling self-help book. I think that her goal was to say "here are a few of the obvious psychological speed bumps that we commonly hit on our way to intelligent decisions. If you can keep the possibility of those decisions traps in mind, you may find your way to a more productive process, and even possibly, a higher "expected value" to your decisions."
I think she accomplishes that, and the book will remain on my list of books to return to, again.
It is by no means, as one reviewer suggested, a self-help book. Ms Duke is too much of a scientist for that. Should recognition of one more component of decision making help us? Of course. But I don't think Ms Duke set out to write a best selling self-help book. I think that her goal was to say "here are a few of the obvious psychological speed bumps that we commonly hit on our way to intelligent decisions. If you can keep the possibility of those decisions traps in mind, you may find your way to a more productive process, and even possibly, a higher "expected value" to your decisions."
I think she accomplishes that, and the book will remain on my list of books to return to, again.
April 14, 2023
Lots of great advice, but there are only so many ways that you can say the same thing.
It starts to get tedious and repetitive.
3 Stars
It starts to get tedious and repetitive.
3 Stars
October 6, 2022
I think there is a major distinction between when to quit and when to stick. During my years in top notch grad school working towards my phd I have seen people who quit too often and people who should have quit a lot sooner. Listening to the author and looking back at my experience I would say it probably come down to two points 1 have you thought it thru? It doesn’t guarantee you to make a right decision but it allows you to deal with the consequences better (either quitting or not) 2 what is at stake? And what are the odds you can make it? If it is something at high stakes and probability is not at your favor, (eg like gambling or building a startup) quit asap when things go sour
A few take away from the author
Have a kill criteria, which is about setting a milestone to hit with a deadline attached; thinking ahead of what signs one might see as things going poorly/well
One favorite quo”we tend to be more rational when you are thinking ahead than we are actually at the moment
A few take away from the author
Have a kill criteria, which is about setting a milestone to hit with a deadline attached; thinking ahead of what signs one might see as things going poorly/well
One favorite quo”we tend to be more rational when you are thinking ahead than we are actually at the moment
December 17, 2022
Did not enjoy this one; it was very repetitive and seemed like an overly padded blog post. This is also one of those books where the author chooses studies to support their theses but only provides high level descriptions, which always makes me wonder how well the study was designed and if the results might've been misconstrued or misrepresented. Impossible to tell from the descriptions.
About halfway through the book I started to question if all this was by design, like some sort of meta concept to try to force me to quit reading, thereby proving the author's point that humans are bad at knowing when to quit? That would've been hilarious and awesome to have that be the last chapter. Like, wow, you're still here? But no, it was just a poorly written book.
About halfway through the book I started to question if all this was by design, like some sort of meta concept to try to force me to quit reading, thereby proving the author's point that humans are bad at knowing when to quit? That would've been hilarious and awesome to have that be the last chapter. Like, wow, you're still here? But no, it was just a poorly written book.
May 9, 2023
O carte musai de citit. Mi se pare că încă se vorbește prea puțin despre renunțare și că imaginea pe care o avem despre ea este foarte greșită.
Nu încurajează abandonul ci renunțarea atunci când într-adevăr este cazul, pentru că este cazul mai des decât o credem noi.
Lucrurile se schimbă constant și asta ar trebui să facem și noi cu obiectivele. De exemplu, atunci când începi un nou orice, știi destul de puține lucruri despre asta; peste 1 lună să zicem, dispui de mai multe informații și poți lua o decizie având la dispoziție mai multe detalii. Acum e momentul să decizi dacă merită să continui sau să renunți.
Sunt multe exemple și multe idei foarte bune. Am scăzut o stea pentru că eu personal mi-am dorit să nu fie îndreptată atât de mult spre sfera profesională; voiam ceva mai multe situații obișnuite.
Nu încurajează abandonul ci renunțarea atunci când într-adevăr este cazul, pentru că este cazul mai des decât o credem noi.
Lucrurile se schimbă constant și asta ar trebui să facem și noi cu obiectivele. De exemplu, atunci când începi un nou orice, știi destul de puține lucruri despre asta; peste 1 lună să zicem, dispui de mai multe informații și poți lua o decizie având la dispoziție mai multe detalii. Acum e momentul să decizi dacă merită să continui sau să renunți.
Sunt multe exemple și multe idei foarte bune. Am scăzut o stea pentru că eu personal mi-am dorit să nu fie îndreptată atât de mult spre sfera profesională; voiam ceva mai multe situații obișnuite.
November 24, 2024
"You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run. Notice that three of those four things are about quitting. When it comes to the importance of cutting your losses at poker, Rogers got it." Author Annie Duke shows in this well researched and accessible book that the best decision-makers are the best quitters. Quitting is hard. Quitting means being ok with not knowing how things may have turned out. So bad are we at quitting that when we do quit on time, it will feel like we have quit too early. Yet ours is a culture that celebrates "sticking at it"; nobody celebrates the people who turn around when the summit was in sight. We all know to watch out for the sunk costs fallacy - yet studies show knowledge of this fallacy confers little immunity to it. When we quit something we often stop tracking how it goes - and so we deprive ourselves of half the information relevant to our decisions.
Despite being a well written book on an interesting topic, I'm just not a huge fan of this genre; I find they can get repetitive and I get tired of the anecdotes that begin every chapter. This book was no exception - I wondered several times whether I should quit. Anyway, I’m torn on whether or not to recommend this book. It helpfully diagnoses why we are so bad at quitting and yet perhaps I should have quit or just read the summaries at the end of each chapter. Sunk costs fallacy perhaps?
Despite being a well written book on an interesting topic, I'm just not a huge fan of this genre; I find they can get repetitive and I get tired of the anecdotes that begin every chapter. This book was no exception - I wondered several times whether I should quit. Anyway, I’m torn on whether or not to recommend this book. It helpfully diagnoses why we are so bad at quitting and yet perhaps I should have quit or just read the summaries at the end of each chapter. Sunk costs fallacy perhaps?
November 11, 2022
3.5 rounded up.
This was a well written, interesting case for the many reasons people need to reconsider the benefits of quitting early when something is costing them more than its worth (time, money, happiness, etc). The author presents a series of examples supporting her thesis, from Mount Everest climbers who failed to turn back in time to Mohammed Ali who retired too late, among many others. Recommended for fans of Malcolm Gladwell or anyone struggling with a job that is making them unhappy and need help finding the courage to quit. Good on audio.
This was a well written, interesting case for the many reasons people need to reconsider the benefits of quitting early when something is costing them more than its worth (time, money, happiness, etc). The author presents a series of examples supporting her thesis, from Mount Everest climbers who failed to turn back in time to Mohammed Ali who retired too late, among many others. Recommended for fans of Malcolm Gladwell or anyone struggling with a job that is making them unhappy and need help finding the courage to quit. Good on audio.
May 22, 2023
2nd read:
This is one of my all-time favorite books by one of my favorite authors. This book just came out last year, and I loved it so much that I already gave it another read. There are an endless amount of books out there telling you to keep pushing and never give up, but I always wanted a book that talks about when you need to walk away and quit wasting your time. Annie Duke does such a fantastic job explaining why “quit” needs to stop being seen in a bad light, the psychology of why it’s difficult for us to give up and what we can do to make better decisions and walk away when it’s necessary.
And just a fun side note: I actually decided to read this book again because I was reading some hustle culture self-help book for entrepreneurs that kept saying throughout the book to never give up, but the reality is, some people have bad ideas or bad products or just bad luck, and they need to stop wasting time, money and resources.
Go out and read this book if you haven’t yet. I’m adding it to the list of books I want to read with my son.
1st read:
I don’t have words to describe how much I loved this book, but I’ll give it a try. I was fortunate enough to get an early review copy of Annie Duke’s latest book, and I binged it over the weekend. Annie’s original book Thinking in Bets was the first book to introduce me to cognitive psych and better thinking, and I’ve been in love with the topic ever since. The problem is that there are so many books on making decisions, but so few of them dedicate any time to discussing when to quick. The second I heard Annie was writing this book, I had to read it.
Annie does an incredible job discussing the importance of quitting and makes clear that we need to get rid of our preconceived ideas that quitting is a sign of failure. As usual, throughout the book, in addition to discussing studies and research, she gives real-life examples. In some cases, people could have died had they not quit.
I’m someone who is constantly working on new projects and doing multiple side hustles, so opportunity costs are a big deal to me. Annie’s book is everything I could have hoped for and more, and now I have some better strategies for choosing when to quit. While there are definitely studies she references that people will be familiar with, she makes them feel fresh by discussing how we can use this information to know when to quit.
This is one of my all-time favorite books by one of my favorite authors. This book just came out last year, and I loved it so much that I already gave it another read. There are an endless amount of books out there telling you to keep pushing and never give up, but I always wanted a book that talks about when you need to walk away and quit wasting your time. Annie Duke does such a fantastic job explaining why “quit” needs to stop being seen in a bad light, the psychology of why it’s difficult for us to give up and what we can do to make better decisions and walk away when it’s necessary.
And just a fun side note: I actually decided to read this book again because I was reading some hustle culture self-help book for entrepreneurs that kept saying throughout the book to never give up, but the reality is, some people have bad ideas or bad products or just bad luck, and they need to stop wasting time, money and resources.
Go out and read this book if you haven’t yet. I’m adding it to the list of books I want to read with my son.
1st read:
I don’t have words to describe how much I loved this book, but I’ll give it a try. I was fortunate enough to get an early review copy of Annie Duke’s latest book, and I binged it over the weekend. Annie’s original book Thinking in Bets was the first book to introduce me to cognitive psych and better thinking, and I’ve been in love with the topic ever since. The problem is that there are so many books on making decisions, but so few of them dedicate any time to discussing when to quick. The second I heard Annie was writing this book, I had to read it.
Annie does an incredible job discussing the importance of quitting and makes clear that we need to get rid of our preconceived ideas that quitting is a sign of failure. As usual, throughout the book, in addition to discussing studies and research, she gives real-life examples. In some cases, people could have died had they not quit.
I’m someone who is constantly working on new projects and doing multiple side hustles, so opportunity costs are a big deal to me. Annie’s book is everything I could have hoped for and more, and now I have some better strategies for choosing when to quit. While there are definitely studies she references that people will be familiar with, she makes them feel fresh by discussing how we can use this information to know when to quit.
February 3, 2025
The content in this book was truly deeply enlightening. This has given me so much to digest. "Success does not lie in sticking to things. But in sticking to the right things and quitting the rest."
The negative connotation that comes from the word Quit. People's refusal to use the word quit. Instead, using words such as "pivot" or "start a new chapter". De-stigmatize the negative connotation around the word quit!!!!
"The Voldemort treatment... the word that must not be named." LOL
I feel like you have to be intuitive to know when it is the right time to quit. And have like innate, trust in yourself, and that things will work out okay.
Amazing examples within this book of quitting:
• Mount Everest turn around time example.💯
• Poker players and optimal quitting example.
• Glitch/slack example.
• "The quitting bind"
• WOWWWWW ... SEARS example of quitting + identity. The cult of identity. This TOTALLY just reframed the idea of "identity" in my brain...I feel like this just unlocked something.
• "The sunk cost effect. This causes people to stay in situations that they should quit." "Escalated commitment " Entrapment, Alex Honnold free solo example.👏👏👏
• "We prefer the ILLUSION of progress" bullet train example. You could be devoting those resources to something else. Beware of false progress.
• "Kill criteria"
• The pass / fail problem of goals.
I really appreciate the chapter summaries as well, can more nonfiction books do this?! 🙏 ALL in ALL definitely one of those life changing reads that I will be coming back to!!!
The negative connotation that comes from the word Quit. People's refusal to use the word quit. Instead, using words such as "pivot" or "start a new chapter". De-stigmatize the negative connotation around the word quit!!!!
"The Voldemort treatment... the word that must not be named." LOL
I feel like you have to be intuitive to know when it is the right time to quit. And have like innate, trust in yourself, and that things will work out okay.
Amazing examples within this book of quitting:
• Mount Everest turn around time example.💯
• Poker players and optimal quitting example.
• Glitch/slack example.
• "The quitting bind"
• WOWWWWW ... SEARS example of quitting + identity. The cult of identity. This TOTALLY just reframed the idea of "identity" in my brain...I feel like this just unlocked something.
• "The sunk cost effect. This causes people to stay in situations that they should quit." "Escalated commitment " Entrapment, Alex Honnold free solo example.👏👏👏
• "We prefer the ILLUSION of progress" bullet train example. You could be devoting those resources to something else. Beware of false progress.
• "Kill criteria"
• The pass / fail problem of goals.
I really appreciate the chapter summaries as well, can more nonfiction books do this?! 🙏 ALL in ALL definitely one of those life changing reads that I will be coming back to!!!
February 3, 2023
I only found the first half insightful, and my key takeaway was that “quitting on time will look and feel like quitting too early” - because doing so requires the foresight to identify what will go wrong in the future, and the courage to give up before it does. So don’t wait until its painfully obvious you’re on the wrong path; if you think you might be taking a dumb risk to hit a “goal”, suffering from sunk cost bias, doubling down to save face, or simply unwilling to admit you were wrong, take a very hard look at where you’re headed, and consider giving up.
January 1, 2023
This book should be compulsory reading in schools
January 30, 2024
In August of 2023 I decided I had to quit a project that was eating away at my soul. I had put 15 months into it, and after each crisis I said "okay, now it will be smooth sailing". It never was. My continued medical problems and mental health were suffering severely. I was both elated and devastated to quit this responsibility. As is typical for me in my overthink-mode, I went to Google to search articles, podcasts, and books that would affirm my decision and decrease the panic. Then I found a podcast interviewing a former professional poker player about a book she wrote on the power of knowing when to walk away. She told the Mt Everest story. I was hooked. I immediately got it on audible. I ate this book up. Voraciously. I later bought it as a physical reminder of everything I read. Because your brain latches on to all kinds of fallicies to keep you from quitting when you need to. Even though much of it focused on business and professionals, it actually taught me a lot about myself. It feels so so silly to say it, but it was my favorite book of 2023. It was the epitome of the right book at the right time.
Side note: Mason had been watching a lot of poker on YouTube at the time. It was his special interest for a year or so. He scoffed when I first told him I read a book from a retired professional poker player, asking how much she had actually made. He looked her up and was significantly impressed. Annie Duke has won over 4 million in live poker tournaments, placing her at 4th highest. 💵 As a hyper-emotive person, live poker seems harder to me than an Olympic sport.
Side note: Mason had been watching a lot of poker on YouTube at the time. It was his special interest for a year or so. He scoffed when I first told him I read a book from a retired professional poker player, asking how much she had actually made. He looked her up and was significantly impressed. Annie Duke has won over 4 million in live poker tournaments, placing her at 4th highest. 💵 As a hyper-emotive person, live poker seems harder to me than an Olympic sport.
May 5, 2024
This was an amazing and revitalizing read. Quitting has a bad rap in our culture, but Duke uses real-world examples of everything from mountaineering to poker to show how quitting can let us redirect our energy from something that is failing to something that could succeed. She offers questions we should ask ourselves to assess whether it's time to quit or to double down, and what might make us change our minds one way or the other. Most of all, she gets into sunk cost-fallacy and other psychological pitfalls that cause us to hang on (to relationships, jobs, projects, and other commitments) long after we should let go and move on. I highly recommend it, and I'll definitely be rereading it.
February 6, 2024
Thought provoking book. Makes a reasoned argument against the hallowed trait of perseverance. Sometimes we can stick at something for too long due to all of the effort and resources we've invested into it instead of basing our decision on an honest assessment of its feasibility and future prospects- the 'sunk cost fallacy'. Well worth reading, offers some good decision making tools and a new perspective on decision making.
June 3, 2024
ļoti vērtīgi. par to, kad un kāpēc iesāktā pamešana ir vairāk vērta, nekā neatlaidīga turpināšana. par iemesliem, kāpēc ir grūti doties projām un kāpēc savu iespēju diversifikācijai būtu jākļūst par mūsu katra galveno uzdevumu.
March 23, 2024
This one was really insightful about human biases towards sticking with a losing cause too long, due to loss aversion and fear of missing out on improbable gains.
Contrary to perceived wisdom about the importance of grit and perseverance.
I found the parts about the importance of kill criteria and doing the hard things first so as to fail fast very enlightening.
One to refer back to and bear in mind whenever making decisions - remember that deciding to put off making a change is not deferring a decision but making a decision to stick with the status quo!
Summary - Life is too short to spend time on things that aren't worthwhile so keep continually reassessing and applying new information. Contrary to popular belief, winners quit a lot and change direction - they don't stubbornly pursue lost causes.
Highly recommended.
Contrary to perceived wisdom about the importance of grit and perseverance.
I found the parts about the importance of kill criteria and doing the hard things first so as to fail fast very enlightening.
One to refer back to and bear in mind whenever making decisions - remember that deciding to put off making a change is not deferring a decision but making a decision to stick with the status quo!
Summary - Life is too short to spend time on things that aren't worthwhile so keep continually reassessing and applying new information. Contrary to popular belief, winners quit a lot and change direction - they don't stubbornly pursue lost causes.
Highly recommended.
September 1, 2023
I stumbled upon this book in the New Arrivals section of our public library. I picked it up because the title was intriguing. I never thought that the book would blow my mind.
My favourite lines from the book are "Grit is good for getting you to stick to hard things that are worthwhile, but grit also gets you to stick to hard things that are no longer worthwhile".
The book teaches you to look for signs to distinguish between things that are worthwhile and things that are no longer worthwhile. It essentially teaches you the skill of decision making.
As I finish it, I'm left with a feeling of wanting to know more. And I'm pleasantly surprised that a book I randomly chose made so much impact on me.
My favourite lines from the book are "Grit is good for getting you to stick to hard things that are worthwhile, but grit also gets you to stick to hard things that are no longer worthwhile".
The book teaches you to look for signs to distinguish between things that are worthwhile and things that are no longer worthwhile. It essentially teaches you the skill of decision making.
As I finish it, I'm left with a feeling of wanting to know more. And I'm pleasantly surprised that a book I randomly chose made so much impact on me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 25, 2024
Don't let the book title/cover fool you, this one isn't self-helpy. Based on cognitive behavioral research, analysis and case studies, the author gives us the ways in which the human psyche naturally avoids quitting, and the telltale signs of when you should quit pursuing something. As someone who struggles with indecision, the main takeaway for me was learning to focus on the "expected value" of how a choice will effect your life both in the present and in the future, and to revisit the choices you've made periodically to see if the costs and benefits still hold true for you.
June 30, 2023
Easy 5 star because I was fascinated almost all of the time and it will fundamentally change the way I think about my decisions for the rest of my life. Wow.
July 5, 2023
There is a time and place for grit and one for quit as well!! A fascinating read and one which I will have to go through many times in the future!!
March 18, 2023
I love it. I think everyone should read it. Helps make better life decisions.
June 28, 2024
Este despre alegeri , alegeri în termeni de valoare. Este greu sa renunti atunci când ești tare atașat, cand ai investit cu drag, pasiune si pentru ca ti-a placut, cand ai multe amintiri (bune si nebune). M-au ajutat povestile spuse de Annie, despre oameni curajosi care au reușit sa renunte si altii prea ambitiosi care s-au pierdut perseverand. Este o lectie de viata cand renunti, iar eu mai am multe de invatat.
December 12, 2024
Anne Duke professional poker player and winner of several international events knows something about the quit.
But she gathered a lot of analytics and interesting material on the subject.
My favourite concept in this book is Monkeys and Pedestals.
Somebody smart in California invented start-up: distribute pedestals among parks or other public spaces, put monkeys on those pedestals who would juggles on them. This kind of show could gather a lot of money.
Company started investing in pedestals, but suddenly they found that monkeys who could juggle is the biggest scarce resource in that business. And all investments in pedestals is just sunk cost of the business.
Sunk cost creates commitment, which will push you to invest more.
But this mistake could be fixed only if you stop thinking about previous losses but start think about the future. If the future looks positively for you, without extra optimism, which destroyed a lot of hopes, it makes sense to invest.
In the end this business with the monkeys could become “monkey business”, if you will not define yours’s the most important resource and will not create the plan how to obtain it.
Another good concept is the path-fail frame of the goal.
Author tells the story of many sportsmen who run marathon, received the damage on the way, but finished the distance with very bad consequences for their health. This is the back side of any goal. Goal is fixed. If you should run 42,195 km but run only 30 km – the goal is not achieved, and you failed. In the fast-changing world we should escape fixed goals. Otherwise, we could find ourselves losers most of the time. Meanwhile if you think about 30 km, it’s still quite an achievement and better not to discount any achievements in your life.
About quitting concept author is giving interesting statistics. Absolute majority of those who quit (job, relationships, sport, you name it) feel themselves happier. Because people were much happier when they quit what they considered a close decision, that shows that people are generally quitting too late. So, if you have small margin between stay or leave – quitting is almost always the best option.
But when someone quits before it seems obvious to others, we mock them to quitting too earlier. That’s the quitting bind.
Another restriction for quitting is endowment effect. This is actually the main effect of ownership. When people own something, they often demand more to give up an object, then they will be willing to pay for acquire it.
Also, author warns you, that you should be very careful with deciding about your identity.
When your identity is what to do, then what you do becomes hard to abandon.
And the last idea which I admired a lot and restrain us from quitting is that worldly wisdom teaches us that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
But she gathered a lot of analytics and interesting material on the subject.
My favourite concept in this book is Monkeys and Pedestals.
Somebody smart in California invented start-up: distribute pedestals among parks or other public spaces, put monkeys on those pedestals who would juggles on them. This kind of show could gather a lot of money.
Company started investing in pedestals, but suddenly they found that monkeys who could juggle is the biggest scarce resource in that business. And all investments in pedestals is just sunk cost of the business.
Sunk cost creates commitment, which will push you to invest more.
But this mistake could be fixed only if you stop thinking about previous losses but start think about the future. If the future looks positively for you, without extra optimism, which destroyed a lot of hopes, it makes sense to invest.
In the end this business with the monkeys could become “monkey business”, if you will not define yours’s the most important resource and will not create the plan how to obtain it.
Another good concept is the path-fail frame of the goal.
Author tells the story of many sportsmen who run marathon, received the damage on the way, but finished the distance with very bad consequences for their health. This is the back side of any goal. Goal is fixed. If you should run 42,195 km but run only 30 km – the goal is not achieved, and you failed. In the fast-changing world we should escape fixed goals. Otherwise, we could find ourselves losers most of the time. Meanwhile if you think about 30 km, it’s still quite an achievement and better not to discount any achievements in your life.
About quitting concept author is giving interesting statistics. Absolute majority of those who quit (job, relationships, sport, you name it) feel themselves happier. Because people were much happier when they quit what they considered a close decision, that shows that people are generally quitting too late. So, if you have small margin between stay or leave – quitting is almost always the best option.
But when someone quits before it seems obvious to others, we mock them to quitting too earlier. That’s the quitting bind.
Another restriction for quitting is endowment effect. This is actually the main effect of ownership. When people own something, they often demand more to give up an object, then they will be willing to pay for acquire it.
Also, author warns you, that you should be very careful with deciding about your identity.
When your identity is what to do, then what you do becomes hard to abandon.
And the last idea which I admired a lot and restrain us from quitting is that worldly wisdom teaches us that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
May 7, 2024
Câteva idei culese din carte:
-dacă renunți la timp, vei simți de obicei că ai renunțat prea devreme;
-cel mai greu moment de a lua o decizie de renunțare este când ești în situația respectivă;
-dacă simți că decizia între a persevera și a te îndepărta este la limită, probabil că este mai bine să renunți;
-când decidem dacă să continuăm sau să renunțăm, ne temem că, dacă renunțăm, vom fi irosit resursele pe care le-am consumat pentru această încercare;
-efectul costurilor irecuperabile determină oamenii să continue în situații în care ar trebui să renunțe;
-nu ne place să închidem conturi mintale în pierdere;
-efectul deținerii este un bias cognitiv în care prețuim un lucru pe care-l deținem mai mult decât dacă nu l-am deține;
-ne putem atașa de obiecte, dar și de propriile idei și credințe;
-temerile cu privire la felul în care ne vor privi ceilalți dacă renunțăm sunt adeseori exagerate;
-viața e prea scurtă ca să-ți petreci timpul cu ocazii care nu mai merită;
-când cineva privește din afară de obicei vede situația mai rațional decât tine;
-când ești obligat să renunți, trebuie să explorezi noi opțiuni și ocazii, însă ar trebui să faci acest lucru înainte să fii forțat;
-planurile de rezervă sunt utile mai ales pentru că unele dintre ele se dovedesc a fi mai bune decât ceea ce faci deja;
-obiectivele ne pot ajuta să realizăm lucruri care merită, dar pot spori și șansele să ne amplificăm angajamentul când ar trebui să renunțăm;
-în general, când renunțăm, ne temem de două lucruri: că am eșuat și că am pierdut timpul, efortul și banii;
-pierderile sunt o problemă de privit înainte, nu înapoi.
Dacă și tu ai probleme când trebuie să abandonezi, aceasta este cartea care te va ajuta. Persistăm în relații sau în cariere care nu ne satisfac pentru că în fața deciziilor dificile ne e teribil să renunțăm. Acest lucru ne ține pe loc.
Este foarte important să fii perseverent și să știi să lupți pentru visul tău, dar este la fel de important să știi când să renunți. Credem că a renunța este un eșec, dar nu întotdeauna.
-dacă renunți la timp, vei simți de obicei că ai renunțat prea devreme;
-cel mai greu moment de a lua o decizie de renunțare este când ești în situația respectivă;
-dacă simți că decizia între a persevera și a te îndepărta este la limită, probabil că este mai bine să renunți;
-când decidem dacă să continuăm sau să renunțăm, ne temem că, dacă renunțăm, vom fi irosit resursele pe care le-am consumat pentru această încercare;
-efectul costurilor irecuperabile determină oamenii să continue în situații în care ar trebui să renunțe;
-nu ne place să închidem conturi mintale în pierdere;
-efectul deținerii este un bias cognitiv în care prețuim un lucru pe care-l deținem mai mult decât dacă nu l-am deține;
-ne putem atașa de obiecte, dar și de propriile idei și credințe;
-temerile cu privire la felul în care ne vor privi ceilalți dacă renunțăm sunt adeseori exagerate;
-viața e prea scurtă ca să-ți petreci timpul cu ocazii care nu mai merită;
-când cineva privește din afară de obicei vede situația mai rațional decât tine;
-când ești obligat să renunți, trebuie să explorezi noi opțiuni și ocazii, însă ar trebui să faci acest lucru înainte să fii forțat;
-planurile de rezervă sunt utile mai ales pentru că unele dintre ele se dovedesc a fi mai bune decât ceea ce faci deja;
-obiectivele ne pot ajuta să realizăm lucruri care merită, dar pot spori și șansele să ne amplificăm angajamentul când ar trebui să renunțăm;
-în general, când renunțăm, ne temem de două lucruri: că am eșuat și că am pierdut timpul, efortul și banii;
-pierderile sunt o problemă de privit înainte, nu înapoi.
Dacă și tu ai probleme când trebuie să abandonezi, aceasta este cartea care te va ajuta. Persistăm în relații sau în cariere care nu ne satisfac pentru că în fața deciziilor dificile ne e teribil să renunțăm. Acest lucru ne ține pe loc.
Este foarte important să fii perseverent și să știi să lupți pentru visul tău, dar este la fel de important să știi când să renunți. Credem că a renunța este un eșec, dar nu întotdeauna.
August 10, 2023
The audible version is great!
The monkey and the pedestal is a memorable analogy. See here as well: https://blog.x.company/tackle-the-mon...
Related books:
- Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
- Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
- Think Like a Freak
- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
- Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
The monkey and the pedestal is a memorable analogy. See here as well: https://blog.x.company/tackle-the-mon...
Related books:
- Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
- Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
- Think Like a Freak
- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
- Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
July 30, 2023
9/10. I read this book and thought "why did it take someone so long to write this?" There was very little that was new in this book, but it's framed well. You'll find Kahneman and Thaler and other research that is cited in hundreds of books, but this book knits it together in a story about quitting.
I folded down a lot of corners on the first two sections of the book, but only one in the third.
I loved Grit by Angela Dunkworth, and this pairs nicely. The books don't actually contradict each other.
I folded down a lot of corners on the first two sections of the book, but only one in the third.
I loved Grit by Angela Dunkworth, and this pairs nicely. The books don't actually contradict each other.
November 7, 2023
An insightful book on the underappreciated art of quitting. Behavioral psychologist Annie Duke on the purpose of the book:
The aim of this book is to create a better understanding of those forces that work against good choices about what and when to quit and the circumstances in which we are reluctant to walk away, and to help all of us view quitting more positively so we can improve our decision-making.
I hope that as a result of reading this book, you will learn to recognize why quitting should be celebrated and how it can become a skill you can develop and use to enrich your life, encouraging you to value optionality, execute better on the things you stick with, and continue exploring so you can flexibly change with (or in advance of) a changing world.
Having the option to quit helps you to explore more, learn more, and ultimately find the right things to stick with.
I was familiar with many of the cognitive biases covered in this book but it’s always refreshing to read Duke given her prowess as a storyteller, writer, and philosopher. Most of the evidence presented is anecdotal, yet there are still many valuable lessons to glean from the examples.
Main takeaway:
Be picky about what you stick to. Persevere in the things that matter, that bring you happiness, and that move you toward your goals. Quit everything else, to free up those resources so you can pursue your goals and stop sticking to things that slow you down.
4.5 / 5. October 2023 (Thinking in Bets is a more comprehensive but different book on decision making. I strongly recommend it.)
Notes
The Truth about Grit & Persistence
Persistence is not always the best decision, certainly not absent context. And context changes.
While grit can get you to stick to hard things that are worthwhile, grit can also get you to stick to hard things that are no longer worthwhile.
We ought not confuse hindsight with foresight, which is what most aphorisms do.
Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.
It’s not as if there aren’t any negative words for grit (like rigid or obstinate), or positive words for quitting (like agile or flexible). But if you tried filling a two-by-two table with positive and negative terms for both concepts, you would soon see the imbalances.
But whether you say “pivot” or “moving on to the next chapter” or “strategic redeployment,” all of these things are, by definition, quitting. After all, stripped of its negative connotation, quitting is merely the choice to stop something that you have started.
But anybody who reads Grit as suggesting that perseverance, absent context, is always a virtue, is misinterpreting Angela Duckworth’s work. She would never say, “Just stick with things and you’ll succeed.” She has herself written about the importance of trying lots of things (which requires that you quit lots of other things) to find the thing that you want to stick with.
The Psychology of Quitting
Quitting is ultimately a forecasting problem, meaning that when to quit is a problem of whether the future looks dire, not whether the present is dire. And a rosy present is a hard thing to walk away from.
Success is not achieved by quitting things just because they are hard. But success is also not achieved by sticking to hard things that are not worthwhile.
When you are weighing whether to quit something or stick with it, you can’t know for sure whether you can succeed at what you’re doing because that’s probabilistic. But there is a crucial difference between the two choices. Only one choice—the choice to persevere—lets you eventually find out the answer. The desire for certainty is the siren song calling us to persevere, because perseverance is the only path to knowing for sure how things will turn out if you stay the course. If you choose to quit, you will always be left to wonder, “What if?”
For each of us on an individual level, the road to happiness is not in sticking blindly to the thing that we’re doing, as so many aphorisms cajole us to do. We need to see what’s going on around us so we can do whatever will maximize our happiness and our time and our well-being.
As Kenny Rogers sang in The Gambler, “You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” Notice that three of those four things are about quitting.
This is the fundamental truth about grit and quit: The opposite of a great virtue is also a great virtue.
Anytime you stick to something when there are better opportunities out there, that is when you are slowing your progress.
Quitting heuristic as a rule of thumb: If you feel like you’ve got a close call between quitting and persevering, it’s likely that quitting is the better choice.
In large part, we are what we do, and our identity is closely connected with whatever we’re focused on, including our careers, relationships, projects, and hobbies. When we quit any of those things, we have to deal with the prospect of quitting part of our identity. And that is painful.
Actionable Advice & Mental Models on Quitting
Making a plan for when to quit should be done long before you are facing the quitting decision. It recognizes that the worst time to make a decision is when you’re “in it.” (turnaround times climbing)
Silicon Valley is famous for mantras like “move fast and break things” and implementing them through strategies like “minimum viable product” (MVP). These types of agile strategies can only work if you have the option to quit. You can’t put out an MVP unless you have the ability to pull it back. The whole point is to get information quickly, so you can quit the stuff that isn’t working and stick with the things that are worthwhile or develop new things that might work even better.
Quitting on time will usually feel like quitting too early. When people quit on time, it will usually feel like they are quitting too early, because it will be long before they experience the choice as a close call.
It shouldn’t be surprising that making good decisions about quitting requires mental time travel since the worst time to make a decision is when you’re in it.
There is a well-known heuristic in management consulting that the right time to fire someone is the first time it crosses your mind. This heuristic is meant to get businesses to the decision sooner, because most managers are reluctant to terminate personnel, hanging on to them too long.
To determine the expected value for any course of action, you start with identifying the range of reasonable possible outcomes. Some of those outcomes will be good and some will be bad, to varying degrees, and each of those outcomes will have some probability of occurring.
“Imagine it’s a year from now and you stayed in the job that you’re currently at—what’s the probability you’re going to be unhappy at the end of that year?” She said, “I know I’m going to be unhappy, one hundred percent.”
Dr. Olstyn Martinez’s story reminds us that expected value is not just about money. It can be measured in health, well-being, happiness, time, self-fulfillment, satisfaction in relationships, or anything else that affects you.
One of the key findings of prospect theory is loss aversion, recognizing that the emotional impact of a loss is greater than the corresponding impact of an equivalent gain. In fact, losing feels about two times as bad to us as winning feels good to us.
When we are in the gains, we don’t want to recruit luck into the equation, luck that might wipe out what we have already won. We want to quit while we’re ahead. But when we are in the losses, we’ll take the gamble, recruiting luck into the equation in the hopes that we can wipe out what we have already lost.
loss aversion creates a preference for options associated with a lower chance of incurring a loss. It makes us risk averse and stops us from getting started, from choosing options where we might lose.
The real advice we should give people is more complicated than you can fit in a four-word slogan: Quit while you’re ahead . . . when the game you are playing or the path you are on is a losing proposition.
Even expert investors don’t get their quitting decisions just right. They outperform on their buying decisions but underperform on their selling decisions.
When we are in the losses, we are not only more likely to stick to a losing course of action, but also to double down. This tendency is called escalation of commitment.
Forty years of experiments and fieldwork across a variety of domains show that people behave as Thaler hypothesized regarding sunk costs. In decisions about whether to move forward, they do take into account what they’ve already spent.
You might be experiencing the sunk cost fallacy if you hear yourself thinking “If I don’t make this work I will have wasted years of my life!” or “We can’t fire her now, she’s been here for decades!” Sunk costs snowball, like a katamari.
To help X-ers become better quitters, Astro Teller has come up with a unique mental model that has been woven into the fabric of X: monkeys and pedestals.
Monkeys and pedestals boils down to some very good advice: Figure out the hard thing first. Try to solve that as quickly as possible. Beware of false progress.
The lesson here is, when you’re starting your business, the first thing you tackle shouldn’t be designing the perfect business card or investing in the most beautiful logo or coming up with the coolest name.
One of Teller’s valuable insights is that pedestal-building creates the illusion of progress rather than actual progress itself. When you are doing something that you already know you can accomplish, you’re not learning anything important about whether the endeavor is worth pursuing. You already know you can build the pedestal. The problem is whether you can train the monkey.
Ask yourself, “What are the signs that, if I see them in the future, will cause me to exit the road I’m on? What could I learn about the state of the world or the state of myself that would change my commitment to this decision?” That list offers you a set of kill criteria, literally criteria for killing a project or changing your mind or cutting your losses.
This is in line with lots of subsequent work that’s been done on all sorts of precommitment contracts. Whether it comes to following through with diet plans or work plans or study plans, these types of precommitment contracts get people to act more rationally. Essentially, kill criteria create a precommitment contract to quit.
Kill criteria, generally, include both states and dates, in the form of “If I am (or am not) in a particular state at a particular date or at a particular time, then I have to quit.”
In general, this idea of casting yourself into the future, imagining a failure, and then looking back to try to figure out why is called a premortem.
Taken together, the monkeys-and-pedestals mental model and kill criteria help us overcome our aversion to closing accounts in the losses.
Wilkinson’s story demonstrates how ownership can interfere with our ability to walk away, especially when the thing we own, we created.
Richard Thaler was the first to name this cognitive illusion, calling it the endowment effect. In fact, he introduced the endowment effect in that same 1980 paper where he coined the term “sunk cost.” He described the endowment effect as “the fact that people often demand more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.”
As the research on the endowment effect has expanded, it has become increasingly clear that we can also become endowed to our beliefs, our ideas, and our decisions. As we carry around beliefs and ideas, they become our possessions. We own what we’ve bought and what we’ve thought. (IKEA effect)
Simply put, the status quo is the path you’re already on or the way you’ve always done things. The bias is that we have a preference to stick with those decisions, methods, and paths that we’ve already set upon, and a resistance to veering from them into something new or different.
Individuals overwhelmingly stick with the status quo option, even when that option is associated with a lower expected value. The bias is widely acknowledged, robust, and has been established as applying to decisions by individuals and organizations.
“Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.” Succeeding unconventionally carries with it the risk of experiencing failure as a result of veering from the status quo.
This phenomenon is known as omission-commission bias. Switching to something, like a new job or a new major or a new relationship or a new business strategy, is perceived as a new decision, and an active one. In contrast, we don’t really view the choice to stick with the status quo as a decision at all.
The next time that you find yourself saying, “I’m just not ready to decide yet,” what you should actually say is “For now I think that the status quo is still the best choice.”
In business as well as in personal decisions, we’ve seen how all these cognitive effects—loss aversion, sure-loss aversion, the sunk cost effect, endowment, status quo bias, and omission-commission bias—create a heady brew that makes it hard for us to quit on time.
The Problem with Identity
Sears: Retail was their identity. If they had held on to the financial services assets and shuttered or sold the retail company, they would have, in some sense, ceased to be Sears, at least the Sears that everyone knew them as. That’s the choice that they faced. When it comes to quitting, the most painful thing to quit is who you are.
But what you need to understand is that we’re all in a cult of our own identity. When you say, “I’m a teacher,” or “I’m a doctor,” or “I’m a gamer,” you’re making a statement about who you are. Adults ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” We don’t ask, “What job do you want?”
Every time you rationalize away new information in order to cling to a belief, that belief becomes more tightly woven into the fabric of your identity.
This desire to maintain internal consistency stops us from quitting. As does the worry that other people are going to judge us as harshly as we judge ourselves.
When we know or believe our decisions are being evaluated by others, our intuition is that we will be more rational, but the opposite is true. External validity increases escalation of commitment.
Conclusion
What is true for grit is true for optimism. Optimism gets you to stick to things that are worthwhile. But optimism also gets you to stick to things that are no longer worthwhile. And life’s too short to do that.
We should all try to find someone to be that person in our life who tells us the truth, whether it’s a close friend, a mentor, a coworker, a sibling, or a parent. Daniel Kahneman advice: “What everybody needs is the friend who really loves them but does not care much about hurt feelings in the moment.”
If you spend months or years in a job or a relationship that’s not contributing to your long-term happiness, that’s time you can never get back.
When people ask for advice, don’t confuse that with being given permission. Instead, when someone comes to you, it’s better to use Ron Conway’s approach, which can be summarized in these four steps.
1. Let them know that you think they should consider quitting.
2. When they push back, retreat and agree with them that they can turn the situation around.
3. Set very clear definitions around what success is going to look like in the near future and memorialize them down as kill criteria.
4. Agree to revisit the conversation and, if the benchmarks for success haven’t been met, you’ll have a serious discussion about quitting.
The choice of how you allocate your time to finding new things or taking advantage of things you’ve already discovered is part of the classic explore-exploit problem.
The ants strike the right balance between exploiting and exploring. The strength of the pheromone trail determines the percentage of foragers that continue to explore, but no matter how strong that scent is, the number of ants exploring never drops to zero.
When we find something that’s working for us, whether it’s a job, a career, a product that we’re developing, a business strategy, or even a favorite restaurant that we love going to, continuing to explore what other options might be available is a good strategy in a world as uncertain as the one that we live in. Never stop exploring.
Whenever you’re pursuing a goal, there are always other opportunities you’re neglecting. You simply don’t see them because you’re not looking for them.
It’s not always the world that changes. Sometimes, it’s you that changes. Your tastes, preferences, and values evolve over time. A job you love in your twenties might not be a job you love in your thirties. Maybe when you’re younger, high-pressure and eighty-hour workweeks are just what you’re looking for. But in your thirties, you may value your time differently, and be less willing to sacrifice time with your family to advance your career.
The power of diversification is, of course, well known in the investment world. Investors want a diversified portfolio for the same reason the ants do, to reduce the impact on their bottom line in case any one of their investments craters. That’s not just true for investors or ants. For any of us, having a diversified portfolio of interests, skills, and opportunities helps to protect us from uncertainty.
The unlesses we attach to the goals we set allow us to follow through on the trope “process over outcome.” The goal itself is outcome oriented, but the unlesses focus on process.
Success means following a good decision process, not just crossing a finish line, especially if it is the wrong one to cross.
Waste is a forward-looking problem, not a backward-looking one.
The aim of this book is to create a better understanding of those forces that work against good choices about what and when to quit and the circumstances in which we are reluctant to walk away, and to help all of us view quitting more positively so we can improve our decision-making.
I hope that as a result of reading this book, you will learn to recognize why quitting should be celebrated and how it can become a skill you can develop and use to enrich your life, encouraging you to value optionality, execute better on the things you stick with, and continue exploring so you can flexibly change with (or in advance of) a changing world.
Having the option to quit helps you to explore more, learn more, and ultimately find the right things to stick with.
I was familiar with many of the cognitive biases covered in this book but it’s always refreshing to read Duke given her prowess as a storyteller, writer, and philosopher. Most of the evidence presented is anecdotal, yet there are still many valuable lessons to glean from the examples.
Main takeaway:
Be picky about what you stick to. Persevere in the things that matter, that bring you happiness, and that move you toward your goals. Quit everything else, to free up those resources so you can pursue your goals and stop sticking to things that slow you down.
4.5 / 5. October 2023 (Thinking in Bets is a more comprehensive but different book on decision making. I strongly recommend it.)
Notes
The Truth about Grit & Persistence
Persistence is not always the best decision, certainly not absent context. And context changes.
While grit can get you to stick to hard things that are worthwhile, grit can also get you to stick to hard things that are no longer worthwhile.
We ought not confuse hindsight with foresight, which is what most aphorisms do.
Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.
It’s not as if there aren’t any negative words for grit (like rigid or obstinate), or positive words for quitting (like agile or flexible). But if you tried filling a two-by-two table with positive and negative terms for both concepts, you would soon see the imbalances.
But whether you say “pivot” or “moving on to the next chapter” or “strategic redeployment,” all of these things are, by definition, quitting. After all, stripped of its negative connotation, quitting is merely the choice to stop something that you have started.
But anybody who reads Grit as suggesting that perseverance, absent context, is always a virtue, is misinterpreting Angela Duckworth’s work. She would never say, “Just stick with things and you’ll succeed.” She has herself written about the importance of trying lots of things (which requires that you quit lots of other things) to find the thing that you want to stick with.
The Psychology of Quitting
Quitting is ultimately a forecasting problem, meaning that when to quit is a problem of whether the future looks dire, not whether the present is dire. And a rosy present is a hard thing to walk away from.
Success is not achieved by quitting things just because they are hard. But success is also not achieved by sticking to hard things that are not worthwhile.
When you are weighing whether to quit something or stick with it, you can’t know for sure whether you can succeed at what you’re doing because that’s probabilistic. But there is a crucial difference between the two choices. Only one choice—the choice to persevere—lets you eventually find out the answer. The desire for certainty is the siren song calling us to persevere, because perseverance is the only path to knowing for sure how things will turn out if you stay the course. If you choose to quit, you will always be left to wonder, “What if?”
For each of us on an individual level, the road to happiness is not in sticking blindly to the thing that we’re doing, as so many aphorisms cajole us to do. We need to see what’s going on around us so we can do whatever will maximize our happiness and our time and our well-being.
As Kenny Rogers sang in The Gambler, “You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” Notice that three of those four things are about quitting.
This is the fundamental truth about grit and quit: The opposite of a great virtue is also a great virtue.
Anytime you stick to something when there are better opportunities out there, that is when you are slowing your progress.
Quitting heuristic as a rule of thumb: If you feel like you’ve got a close call between quitting and persevering, it’s likely that quitting is the better choice.
In large part, we are what we do, and our identity is closely connected with whatever we’re focused on, including our careers, relationships, projects, and hobbies. When we quit any of those things, we have to deal with the prospect of quitting part of our identity. And that is painful.
Actionable Advice & Mental Models on Quitting
Making a plan for when to quit should be done long before you are facing the quitting decision. It recognizes that the worst time to make a decision is when you’re “in it.” (turnaround times climbing)
Silicon Valley is famous for mantras like “move fast and break things” and implementing them through strategies like “minimum viable product” (MVP). These types of agile strategies can only work if you have the option to quit. You can’t put out an MVP unless you have the ability to pull it back. The whole point is to get information quickly, so you can quit the stuff that isn’t working and stick with the things that are worthwhile or develop new things that might work even better.
Quitting on time will usually feel like quitting too early. When people quit on time, it will usually feel like they are quitting too early, because it will be long before they experience the choice as a close call.
It shouldn’t be surprising that making good decisions about quitting requires mental time travel since the worst time to make a decision is when you’re in it.
There is a well-known heuristic in management consulting that the right time to fire someone is the first time it crosses your mind. This heuristic is meant to get businesses to the decision sooner, because most managers are reluctant to terminate personnel, hanging on to them too long.
To determine the expected value for any course of action, you start with identifying the range of reasonable possible outcomes. Some of those outcomes will be good and some will be bad, to varying degrees, and each of those outcomes will have some probability of occurring.
“Imagine it’s a year from now and you stayed in the job that you’re currently at—what’s the probability you’re going to be unhappy at the end of that year?” She said, “I know I’m going to be unhappy, one hundred percent.”
Dr. Olstyn Martinez’s story reminds us that expected value is not just about money. It can be measured in health, well-being, happiness, time, self-fulfillment, satisfaction in relationships, or anything else that affects you.
One of the key findings of prospect theory is loss aversion, recognizing that the emotional impact of a loss is greater than the corresponding impact of an equivalent gain. In fact, losing feels about two times as bad to us as winning feels good to us.
When we are in the gains, we don’t want to recruit luck into the equation, luck that might wipe out what we have already won. We want to quit while we’re ahead. But when we are in the losses, we’ll take the gamble, recruiting luck into the equation in the hopes that we can wipe out what we have already lost.
loss aversion creates a preference for options associated with a lower chance of incurring a loss. It makes us risk averse and stops us from getting started, from choosing options where we might lose.
The real advice we should give people is more complicated than you can fit in a four-word slogan: Quit while you’re ahead . . . when the game you are playing or the path you are on is a losing proposition.
Even expert investors don’t get their quitting decisions just right. They outperform on their buying decisions but underperform on their selling decisions.
When we are in the losses, we are not only more likely to stick to a losing course of action, but also to double down. This tendency is called escalation of commitment.
Forty years of experiments and fieldwork across a variety of domains show that people behave as Thaler hypothesized regarding sunk costs. In decisions about whether to move forward, they do take into account what they’ve already spent.
You might be experiencing the sunk cost fallacy if you hear yourself thinking “If I don’t make this work I will have wasted years of my life!” or “We can’t fire her now, she’s been here for decades!” Sunk costs snowball, like a katamari.
To help X-ers become better quitters, Astro Teller has come up with a unique mental model that has been woven into the fabric of X: monkeys and pedestals.
Monkeys and pedestals boils down to some very good advice: Figure out the hard thing first. Try to solve that as quickly as possible. Beware of false progress.
The lesson here is, when you’re starting your business, the first thing you tackle shouldn’t be designing the perfect business card or investing in the most beautiful logo or coming up with the coolest name.
One of Teller’s valuable insights is that pedestal-building creates the illusion of progress rather than actual progress itself. When you are doing something that you already know you can accomplish, you’re not learning anything important about whether the endeavor is worth pursuing. You already know you can build the pedestal. The problem is whether you can train the monkey.
Ask yourself, “What are the signs that, if I see them in the future, will cause me to exit the road I’m on? What could I learn about the state of the world or the state of myself that would change my commitment to this decision?” That list offers you a set of kill criteria, literally criteria for killing a project or changing your mind or cutting your losses.
This is in line with lots of subsequent work that’s been done on all sorts of precommitment contracts. Whether it comes to following through with diet plans or work plans or study plans, these types of precommitment contracts get people to act more rationally. Essentially, kill criteria create a precommitment contract to quit.
Kill criteria, generally, include both states and dates, in the form of “If I am (or am not) in a particular state at a particular date or at a particular time, then I have to quit.”
In general, this idea of casting yourself into the future, imagining a failure, and then looking back to try to figure out why is called a premortem.
Taken together, the monkeys-and-pedestals mental model and kill criteria help us overcome our aversion to closing accounts in the losses.
Wilkinson’s story demonstrates how ownership can interfere with our ability to walk away, especially when the thing we own, we created.
Richard Thaler was the first to name this cognitive illusion, calling it the endowment effect. In fact, he introduced the endowment effect in that same 1980 paper where he coined the term “sunk cost.” He described the endowment effect as “the fact that people often demand more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.”
As the research on the endowment effect has expanded, it has become increasingly clear that we can also become endowed to our beliefs, our ideas, and our decisions. As we carry around beliefs and ideas, they become our possessions. We own what we’ve bought and what we’ve thought. (IKEA effect)
Simply put, the status quo is the path you’re already on or the way you’ve always done things. The bias is that we have a preference to stick with those decisions, methods, and paths that we’ve already set upon, and a resistance to veering from them into something new or different.
Individuals overwhelmingly stick with the status quo option, even when that option is associated with a lower expected value. The bias is widely acknowledged, robust, and has been established as applying to decisions by individuals and organizations.
“Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.” Succeeding unconventionally carries with it the risk of experiencing failure as a result of veering from the status quo.
This phenomenon is known as omission-commission bias. Switching to something, like a new job or a new major or a new relationship or a new business strategy, is perceived as a new decision, and an active one. In contrast, we don’t really view the choice to stick with the status quo as a decision at all.
The next time that you find yourself saying, “I’m just not ready to decide yet,” what you should actually say is “For now I think that the status quo is still the best choice.”
In business as well as in personal decisions, we’ve seen how all these cognitive effects—loss aversion, sure-loss aversion, the sunk cost effect, endowment, status quo bias, and omission-commission bias—create a heady brew that makes it hard for us to quit on time.
The Problem with Identity
Sears: Retail was their identity. If they had held on to the financial services assets and shuttered or sold the retail company, they would have, in some sense, ceased to be Sears, at least the Sears that everyone knew them as. That’s the choice that they faced. When it comes to quitting, the most painful thing to quit is who you are.
But what you need to understand is that we’re all in a cult of our own identity. When you say, “I’m a teacher,” or “I’m a doctor,” or “I’m a gamer,” you’re making a statement about who you are. Adults ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” We don’t ask, “What job do you want?”
Every time you rationalize away new information in order to cling to a belief, that belief becomes more tightly woven into the fabric of your identity.
This desire to maintain internal consistency stops us from quitting. As does the worry that other people are going to judge us as harshly as we judge ourselves.
When we know or believe our decisions are being evaluated by others, our intuition is that we will be more rational, but the opposite is true. External validity increases escalation of commitment.
Conclusion
What is true for grit is true for optimism. Optimism gets you to stick to things that are worthwhile. But optimism also gets you to stick to things that are no longer worthwhile. And life’s too short to do that.
We should all try to find someone to be that person in our life who tells us the truth, whether it’s a close friend, a mentor, a coworker, a sibling, or a parent. Daniel Kahneman advice: “What everybody needs is the friend who really loves them but does not care much about hurt feelings in the moment.”
If you spend months or years in a job or a relationship that’s not contributing to your long-term happiness, that’s time you can never get back.
When people ask for advice, don’t confuse that with being given permission. Instead, when someone comes to you, it’s better to use Ron Conway’s approach, which can be summarized in these four steps.
1. Let them know that you think they should consider quitting.
2. When they push back, retreat and agree with them that they can turn the situation around.
3. Set very clear definitions around what success is going to look like in the near future and memorialize them down as kill criteria.
4. Agree to revisit the conversation and, if the benchmarks for success haven’t been met, you’ll have a serious discussion about quitting.
The choice of how you allocate your time to finding new things or taking advantage of things you’ve already discovered is part of the classic explore-exploit problem.
The ants strike the right balance between exploiting and exploring. The strength of the pheromone trail determines the percentage of foragers that continue to explore, but no matter how strong that scent is, the number of ants exploring never drops to zero.
When we find something that’s working for us, whether it’s a job, a career, a product that we’re developing, a business strategy, or even a favorite restaurant that we love going to, continuing to explore what other options might be available is a good strategy in a world as uncertain as the one that we live in. Never stop exploring.
Whenever you’re pursuing a goal, there are always other opportunities you’re neglecting. You simply don’t see them because you’re not looking for them.
It’s not always the world that changes. Sometimes, it’s you that changes. Your tastes, preferences, and values evolve over time. A job you love in your twenties might not be a job you love in your thirties. Maybe when you’re younger, high-pressure and eighty-hour workweeks are just what you’re looking for. But in your thirties, you may value your time differently, and be less willing to sacrifice time with your family to advance your career.
The power of diversification is, of course, well known in the investment world. Investors want a diversified portfolio for the same reason the ants do, to reduce the impact on their bottom line in case any one of their investments craters. That’s not just true for investors or ants. For any of us, having a diversified portfolio of interests, skills, and opportunities helps to protect us from uncertainty.
The unlesses we attach to the goals we set allow us to follow through on the trope “process over outcome.” The goal itself is outcome oriented, but the unlesses focus on process.
Success means following a good decision process, not just crossing a finish line, especially if it is the wrong one to cross.
Waste is a forward-looking problem, not a backward-looking one.
July 31, 2024
/Audiobook/
A few months ago I listened to an audiobook about grit and how perseverance gets you far and found it very interesting, but I think listening to a book about the right time to quit sometimes was a good balance.
The main advice to follow that I remembered:
* Being able to quit should be seen in a positive light and not as a failure. It's a smart decision when conditions change and are not favorable anymore.
* Set a 'kill' criteria aka a time when you do not reach a certain result by a certain time that you will quit irrespective of how much time or money you have put into the project (quite often we continue along the path that's failing because we have already 'spent' so much on a project, but some things are not possible to save).
* Talk to your friends to find a 'quitting coach' who actually keeps you responsible for following that criteria and making the hard decision based on it.
* Quitting something we see as the core of us is the most difficult to do and often leads us continuing for too long (I. e you've grown up as a figure skater, then you cannot give it up as it's your identity even if your body and mind say you should)
Every chapter finished with the key learnings and points, that I found really valuable and a good summary. There are thoughts about how to understand if it makes sense to quit a project, a relationship, or a job with real-life examples of people either quitting on time or making the wrong decision by not quitting.
There were other key points and a lot of really great examples, so I definitely recommend reading it to see quitting in a positive light and realizing that continuing through everything doesn't always mean that you're actually winning. I think every person would take something different out of this book based on their life experience.
A few months ago I listened to an audiobook about grit and how perseverance gets you far and found it very interesting, but I think listening to a book about the right time to quit sometimes was a good balance.
The main advice to follow that I remembered:
* Being able to quit should be seen in a positive light and not as a failure. It's a smart decision when conditions change and are not favorable anymore.
* Set a 'kill' criteria aka a time when you do not reach a certain result by a certain time that you will quit irrespective of how much time or money you have put into the project (quite often we continue along the path that's failing because we have already 'spent' so much on a project, but some things are not possible to save).
* Talk to your friends to find a 'quitting coach' who actually keeps you responsible for following that criteria and making the hard decision based on it.
* Quitting something we see as the core of us is the most difficult to do and often leads us continuing for too long (I. e you've grown up as a figure skater, then you cannot give it up as it's your identity even if your body and mind say you should)
Every chapter finished with the key learnings and points, that I found really valuable and a good summary. There are thoughts about how to understand if it makes sense to quit a project, a relationship, or a job with real-life examples of people either quitting on time or making the wrong decision by not quitting.
There were other key points and a lot of really great examples, so I definitely recommend reading it to see quitting in a positive light and realizing that continuing through everything doesn't always mean that you're actually winning. I think every person would take something different out of this book based on their life experience.
February 24, 2024
One of the best books I’ve read recently. The book explores the concept of quitting and how it can be a powerful tool in decision-making. Duke draws on her background as a professional poker player to provide insights on when to quit, how to overcome the fear of quitting, and why quitting can lead to better outcomes in the long run. The book encourages readers to reevaluate their approach to decision-making and embrace the idea that quitting can be a strategic and beneficial choice.
June 18, 2023
Quitting gets a bad rep. But knowing how, when, and what to quit can actually lead to a more emotionally healthy and fulfilling life. Exploring the mental models and science behind quitting, this book arms you with just that.
Annie Duke reframes how we should approach progress, failures, and goals and this book truly should be an essential read for all of us.
Annie Duke reframes how we should approach progress, failures, and goals and this book truly should be an essential read for all of us.
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