Quitting is sometimes the right decision. Here's how to know when to walk away

0:00This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choisology. Choisology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at Schwab.com slash podcast. You're listening to LifeKit from NPR. Hey, it's Maryl. Raise your hand if you've heard one of these things. Don't be a quitter. Quitter is never quit and quitter is never win. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. There's all this stuff around quitting that makes it seem cowardly. This is Annie Duke, a cognitive psychologist, decision strategist, and a former professional poker player. She wrote a book called Quit and she says, we tend to think about quitting as a failure. Even though it's not failure, if you're doing it in a situation where you ought to be walking away, that's a success. Because you've stopped spinning your wheels or wasting your time and you get to go do

1:02other things that you'll enjoy more or that bring more value to your life. But how do you know when it's one of those situations, when it is time to walk away? Or as Angela Duckworth puts it, went to grit and went to quit. Angela is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. She pioneered academic research on grit, which she defines as a mix of passion and perseverance that allows people to achieve their long-term goals. It has to be that sometimes it is better to quit. It's not that 100% the time we should persist, right? Angela knows a mountain climber who has scaled some of the highest peaks in the world. And one of the things that he and other people like him have said is that one of the most important things to know as a mountaineer is when you should turn back from the summit before you've reached it. In this episode of LifeKit, how to know when to quit something. That could be a career path, your pursuit of a particular goal, a relationship, it could

2:03be lots of things. We're going to give you the tools to evaluate your goals and figure out what they're costing you and whether it's worth persisting. This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choisology, hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the best-selling book, How to Change. Choisology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Here are true stories from Nobel laureates, historians, authors, athletes, and more about why people do the things they do. Download the latest episode and subscribe at Schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen. This message comes from Betterment. Dan Egan, VP of Behavioral Finance and Investing, explains why Betterment was designed to take

3:04the time-consuming work out of smart investing. I was doing all of these things that were pretty straightforward to implement. I just needed to spend my time doing them. Betterment automates the same practices so that I know I'm doing portfolio management and goal-based planning without me having to spend hours of my life doing it. Learn more at Betterment.com, investing in Valve's risk, performance not guaranteed. This is Ira Glass. On this American life, we tell stories about when things change. Like for this guy David, whose entire life took a sharp, unexpected, and very unpleasant term. And it did take me a while to realize it was basically because the monkey pressed the button. That's right, because the monkey pressed the button. Pricing stories every week, wherever you get your podcasts. When we were in the studio, Annie Duke, the cognitive psychologist, posed a question to me. Feel free to play along here. I want you to imagine what's a band, tell me a band that you like.

4:05I said Olivia Dean, the neo soul singer. So Annie tells me, imagine Olivia Dean is coming to town. She's doing an outdoor concert in Central Park. Do I want to go? Yeah. But then the day of the concert, I actually don't have a ticket yet. And there's a freak weather event. And it's like, sleeting and hailing, icy rain, freezing cold. It's like 15 degrees out. It's so cold. And there's no cover. Like they're not moving inside. It's still going to be outside. And I call you up and I'm like, hey. I know you like Olivia Dean. I bought a ticket to go to this concert. I don't want to go because of the weather. But do you want my free ticket? No. No. Now she says, imagine same situation. Olivia Dean is coming to town and doing an outdoor concert. But I did buy a ticket and it cost me 500 bucks. Are you still so sure that you're not going? No, I'd probably consider it more. Right. I'd probably be like, oh, I could wear like a snow suit, I guess.

5:09Yeah. Because you don't want to waste the $500. Right. But are you already spent it? The point is, I said I didn't want to go to the concert when it was free because I'd made the calculation that it wasn't worth the misery of standing in that weather. In the second scenario, the fact that I'd already spent $500 shouldn't have changed that. But our brains are funny that way. By the way, this is a concept known in economics as the sunk cost fallacy. The fallacy is thinking you should stick with something just because you've already put a lot of money or time or effort into it. Stayed it another way. And I'm pretty sure I saw this on a quote card on social media. If you dig a hole in the wrong place, digging deeper is not going to help. So how do we know if we're digging in the right place? Take away one. The fact that you're seriously thinking about quitting is a sign in itself. Annie has talked to a lot of people about quitting. And she hasn't met many adults who say they quit something too soon.

6:10Usually they say they stuck around with something or someone far past that situation's expiration date. Adults always feel like they quit too late. And what that means is that you're quitting too late. Again, our culture defines quitting as a failure, which means we're biased against it. So Annie says, when the thought of quitting comes into your mind, especially repeatedly, you should take that thought seriously and set a deadline. Let's say your goal is to have a second child. You've had trouble conceiving. So you tried IVF in vitro fertilization. You've gone through several rounds, your body hurts, you're mentally and emotionally exhausted, and you're too tired to spend quality time with the kid you have. You don't know if you should keep going. She says, start with that deadline. It could be, I'm okay trying for another year. It could be, I'm okay investing this much more money in this. It could be, I'm okay giving it two more cycles or three more cycles, but you have to have a deadline

7:11and you have to figure out what that deadline is for you. A deadline gives you time to come up with a plan and build an off ramp if you need it. For instance, if you want to quit your job but can't afford to, you can start pursuing other work or other careers while you're in your current position. A deadline also gives you a chance to ask yourself some important questions. And that's takeaway two, interrogate your goal. Put it under the microscope. One of the questions you'll want to ask yourself is why do I want this thing? Colin Rocker is the founder of For the First, a meetup club for first generation professionals. He also started a career education platform at CareerColin that teaches those professionals how to navigate a workplace that wasn't created with them in mind. And he quit something about a year ago. He quit the pursuit of a corporate nine to five job and started his own business. Now, Colin had never wanted to be a business owner. His dad was an entrepreneur. He owned a plumbing business and it was not easy.

8:13We got evicted and we had all these other financial troubles and that's what I associated a lot of pain with running your own business, which wasn't exactly unfounded, but it drove me into pursue a more traditional career for myself that was corporate and more and more white color. But then last year, Colin lost his job, which kind of poked a hole in his logic that a nine to five gig was a guarantee of financial stability. And at that moment, he also realized he was pursuing this career path for another reason. I was chasing a certain idea of how I wanted to be perceived and I wanted to be perceived as successful. I wanted to be perceived as somewhat powerful and influential, right, in some ways. And I thought that if I could stack the right mix of titles and salaries and company names on a LinkedIn profile or on a resume, I would somehow not even really feel a hole, but just be perceived as someone who had gone out and made something for themselves. And I wanted that perception of significance.

9:14So, Colin's advice for you is to think about why you're on a particular path. Be honest with yourself and ask, are you the same person who set this goal? A lot of times people go about certain things, whether this is joining a sports team, declaring a certain major, starting a relationship, starting a job or career path, and they get further down the line and the original intention for whatever reason has now completely fallen to the wayside. And they're doing something more out of inertia than intention. Another question to ask yourself, is who are you afraid of disappointing if you quit this thing? That could be a parent or a coach, a professor or a group of friends, a partner. People come to me sometimes for a career advice, right, which I'm always happy to give. And they explain this whole situation where they're clearly, clearly, clearly, not passionate about what they're doing for work. They don't want to continue doing it, but they feel drawn to it or they feel like they have to do it because of someone else's perception of them

10:15or what it means to someone else. On that note, another important question when you're thinking about quitting something, is how passionate am I about this goal? Angela Duckworth, who studies grit, defines it as the combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals. And she says the passion part is really important. Because yeah, if you want to reach a goal, you've got to be deliberate, you've got to put in the reps. But what are you putting the reps in about? I mean, what are you practicing? It should be something that grabs your attention without your forcing your attention to that object. In her classes, Angela will tell students, grit is about working hard, but before you get working hard, I want you to learn to choose easy. I want you to choose to do something with your life, starting today that spontaneously grabs your attention, puts you into the flow state. I want you to do something where you feel this resonance with who you are when you are at your best,

11:16your personal values. If you can help it, don't choose a career or a hobby or a lifestyle or a path where you're going to be hating every moment. Choose things where you're like, what? I get to think about this. I get to talk about this. I get to hang out with people who want to do this. And by the way, when I do this, I really feel in some moral way that this is my best self that I can give to the world. OK, one more question to ask yourself as you decide whether to quit something. Is this goal realistic? Take away three is to gather the data about your goal. Depending on the goal, Annie Duke says, there are different ways to gather data and figure out your individual chance of success. Let's say you're 15 and you want to be a pro skateboarder. I can actually look and say, when I look at people who have made the pros, where were they at 15, or where were they after the amount of practice

12:17and coaching and so on, so forth, that we have actually put into this up to this point. Or if we take the IVF example, your fertility clinic could provide stats on how likely success is at your age and given your situation. Then you can decide for yourself, what is my appetite for risk? Am I OK if I have a 10% chance? Am I only OK if I have a 50% chance? Am I only OK if I have an 80% chance? You also want to figure out what this goal is costing you. How much money are you spending in pursuit of this dream or this path? Is it affecting your health? Are you miserable? Are you unable to sleep? I can't tell you the amount of times I've shown up to jobs that I ended up leaving where I could feel the tightness of my chest. I've lost hair, I've grown gray hairs. Also think about what else you could be doing with your time. This is another concept for economics called opportunity cost. It's always a question of, could I be doing something better?

13:19Other than applying to vet school again, going through another IVF cycle, trying to get that interview or that internship, it's invisible. It's like the thing that you're not doing. So it's not the center of your attention. So think about what quitting could free you up to do and really allow yourself to daydream. It's like making way for a new growth if you think about like a garden or maybe you're played at a buffet, right? It's like if you have too much stuff going on, there's no room for anything new to come into your life. And so I found that when I created that space, it allowed other things to come into my life. Like my role now is a father, even starting with community and all these other beautiful things I've been able to do. There just wasn't a lot of space for that in the life I was living. We'll have more life kit after the break. Okay, take away four. If you're thinking about quitting something and you're still stuck, ask a couple people you trust. Should I keep doing this?

14:21Annie says we've all been in situations where we look at someone else. You know, they're in a relationship or they're in a job or they're pursuing something and we're thinking, what are you doing? They're coming and complaining to you and like, I hate my partner and I want to leave. And then you see them six months later and you're like, so how's that going? And they haven't done anything about it and you're like, man, they should really just quit. The reason we can be so levelheaded in these situations, Annie says, is that we don't carry around all the baggage. They do. We're not carrying around their sunk costs. All the time they've invested in this relationship or career path or whatever else. So you can see that situation much more clearly than they can. So guess what? Other people can see your situation more clearly than you can. So the advice here? Recruit other people to help you. Mentors, peers, friends. When there is a chorus of people who care about you, and know you, who say, I think you should give up and do something more valuable

15:23with your time, you know, I think you should listen. When you talk to these trusted advisors, Annie says, make sure you tell them, be honest with me. Tell me what I need to hear, not what you think I want to hear. Because I want to know the truth for myself, because I care about, you know, if you're 22, I care about 32 year old me. I don't care about whether you think you're hurting my feelings right now. So big picture here. We're not saying you should quit that thing. That only you can decide. But we would love it if you gave yourself permission to quit things in general when that's the right choice for you. And to make space for whatever's next. To give yourself the opportunity to bloom. It felt for me like a smaller existence before I'd quit this identity that wasn't necessarily serving me in every way it could. But I feel like a much more filled up person I feel like I'm showing up better for my friends, I'm showing up better for my family, and in my work because I feel more fulfilled by it. Okay, time for a recap.

16:26Take away one. Given our culture's bias against quitting, and the way people act like quitting equals failure, the fact that you're still thinking about it is something to take seriously. You may not be ready to quit today, but set yourself a deadline to make the decision. Take away two. Interrogate your current path or goal. Ask questions like, why do I want to do this thing? Or why am I doing this? Am I the same person who set this goal? Am I just sticking with this because I'm afraid to disappoint my parents or my partner or someone else? Am I passionate about this goal? And is this goal realistic? Take away three. Gather the data. Figure out your likelihood of success and whether you're comfortable with that. Also think about what pursuing this goal is costing you in terms of time, money, stress, and opportunity cost. That's all the stuff you're not doing because you are doing this. And take away four. If you're thinking about quitting something and you're still stuck, ask a couple people you trust for their opinion.

17:29One more tip from Annie Duke before we go. From now on, when you set goals, make a list of unlesses. So what that means is that I'm going to go for this thing unless. I'm going to try to be a pro skateboarder. Unless I keep getting seriously injured. I'm going to try to have another kid this year, unless I lose my job. I'm going to join the circus, unless I don't love it anymore. Think of this like a little contract with yourself that could make it easier to quit when the moment is right. That's our show. Before we head out, if you found something useful in today's episode, there's probably somebody else in your life who would too. Why not hit that share button and send them this episode now? This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our digital editor is Malika Garib, and our visual editor is CJ Ricalon. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor and Lauren Gonzales is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle,

18:29Claire Mauritian Eiter, Lennon Sherburn, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Robert Rodriguez. I'm Mary El Segara. Thanks for listening. This message comes from Granger. For the ones who get it done, Granger offers the professional grade products you need to get the job done. With fast delivery and access to technical product experts ready to help you meet any challenge. Call, click Granger.com, or just stop by.