A useful 2022 book titled Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a useful 2022 book by Annie Duke titled Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. You might quit by hanging up your boxing gloves. On page xxiv of the Prologue (shown in the Amazon sample) she describes the book’s organization as follows:

 

“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’ve organized this material into four sections, with three interludes.

 

Section I will make the case for quitting as a decision skill worth developing. Chapter 1 covers why quitting is our best tool for making decisions under uncertainty, because it allows us to change course after new information is revealed. I’ll also examine how the very uncertainty that makes the option to quit so valuable can make it hard to quit at all, Chapter 2 explores why, when you quit on time, it usually feels like you quit too early. Quitting is ultimately a forecasting problem, meaning that when to quit is a problem of whether the future looks dirs., not whether the present is dire. And a rosy present is a heard thing to walk away from. Chapter 3 will dive into the science of quitting, showcasing the evidence that we all tend to poorly calibrate our grit/quit decisions: In particular, when the world gives us bad news we tend to persevere too long, but when we get good news, we tend to quit too soon.

 

In Section II, I cover specifically how your decision to quit is affected by whether you are winning or losing (‘in the losses’). Chapter 4 introduces the concept of escalation of commitment, where we respond to bad news by increasing our commitment to a losing course of action. Chapter 5 describes why sunk costs make it so hard to walk away. I’ll dive deep into the fear of waste and how the money, time, effort, or other resources we have invested in a course of action negatively impact decisions about whether to move forward. Chapter 6 offers up strategies to improve decisions about when to quit, including the importance of tacking the hardest part of a project first, as well as ways to develop benchmarks, criteria, and signals, called kill criteria, that will help ensure you quit sooner when persisting is no longer in your best interest.

 

In Section III, I’ll get deeper into the cognitive biases that interfere with quitting. Chapter 7 explores how ownership, both of things and ideas, makes it difficult to change course, as well as the powerful pull of the status quo. I’ll cover the dual effects of how the fear of uncertainty and the fear of losing associated with a changing course prevent us from charting a new path. Chapter 8 looks at how our identity – and our desire for a consistent identity – becomes an impediment to quitting, and can cause us to escalate commitment to disastrous choices. Chapter 9 offers an additional strategy for mitigating the cognitive biases that make walking away so hard; a quitting coach, or someone who can see our situation from the outside and help us to change course when the time is right.

 

In Section IV, I examine the problem of opportunity cost. Whenever we commit to a course of action, by default we are committing to not pursuing other things. How do we know when it’s time to quit one choice in favor of another, better one? Chapter 10 highlights the lessons we learn when we’re forced to quit, and how to apply those lessons preemptively. Chapter 11 looks at the downside of goals, arguing that, although goals are a motivating force, they can also motivate you to stick to things that are no longer worthwhile. The pass-fail nature of goals is at odds with an unfixed and flexible world, and the desire to meet a goal can keep us from seeing other paths and opportunities available to us. I’ll also argue for why every goal needs caveats, as well as progress markers along the way.

 

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.

 

To be clear, there are lots of hard things that are absolutely worth sticking to, and resilience and grit are going to help you do that. 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.

 

The trick is figuring out when to persevere and when to walk away. This book will develop the tools to do that.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6 is titled Monkeys and Pedestals. On page 111 she explains:

 

“Imagine that you’re trying to train a monkey to juggle flaming swords while standing on a pedestal in a public park. If you can achieve such an impressive spectacle, you’ve got a moneymaking act on your hands.

 

Teller recognizes that there are two pieces to becoming successful at this endeavor: training the monkey and building the pedestal. One piece of the puzzle presents a a possibly intractable obstacle in the way of success. And the other is building the pedestal. People have been building pedestals since ancient Greece and probably before. Over two-plus millenia, pedestals have been thoroughly figured out. You can buy one at a furniture store or a hardware store, or turn a milk crate upside down.

 

The bottleneck, the hard thing, is training a monkey to juggle flaming torches.

 

The point of this mental model is to remind you that there is no point building the pedestal if you can’t train the monkey.

 

In other words, you ought to tackle the hardest part of the problem first.”

 

The boxing gloves, monkey, and pedestal all were adapted from Wikimedia Commons.