 My name is Annie Duke. I'm a former professional poker player and cognitive scientist. I speak in consults, in decision strategy, in the decision-making space, and I also write in that space. I've written three books for general audiences. The first is thinking of bets. The second is how to decide, and my latest is quit the power of knowing when to walk away. Annie, welcome. You're absolutely incredible. I adore you, and everything that you've written here is absolutely fantastic. So congratulations, and welcome, and such an honor to have you on the podcast. So yeah, bravo on being you. Oh, that was nice. That was a really nice, that makes me feel good. I started my day feeling good about myself. Thank you, Grace. Oh, fantastic. Whereabouts are you? I'm outside of Philadelphia. Fantastic. Where our politics is as crazy as yours. Well, I don't know. I mean, so we're recording this on Thursday, the 20th of October. Yeah, so I got a text this morning saying, did Liz Truss read your book? Right. So an hour ago, I was Prime Minister. Another Prime Minister quit, and so what a fantastic day to have a podcast chat about quitting. And knowing when to quit. She probably should have read your book, and then maybe she would have quit a little bit sooner. Can you quit sooner? Well, we did look it up. It is a record. The only time a Prime Minister has spent less time in power was in the 1800s, and it was because the person died. Well, yeah, there you go. Our shortest running president also died. So, right. Got sick on inauguration day because it's very cold. Got pneumonia. Oh, gosh, I want to say, was it William Henry Harrison? Now I feel like I have to look it up. Well, Gagel is your friend. Harrison died, pneumonia. Let's see if that comes up. William Henry Harrison. You win all the points. Oh, there you go. You have to keep that in the podcast. That's pretty strong on my part. Thank you very much. And this is another reason why if anyone's listening and they're doing auditions for pub quiz contestants, get Annie on your team. Yeah. Well, I will be worse with British history, but if you need any American history, you have to be strong. Well, I look forward to being on a pub quiz team with you sometime soon. But we wanted to talk about your incredible book, which is behind me if you're watching this, Quit the Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. And I must just say when I had this book, when I was sending the book very kindly to prepare for the podcast, I had it on my desk and I actually covered it up with another book, because I didn't want to walk into my office every day and see something saying quit. And it's really interesting when you start reading it. You realize all these biases and all of these behavioral traits that we have as humans that make us so scared of even seeing the words. And I just thought it's fascinating and brilliant. And yeah, I mean, I don't know where do you want to explain a little bit about it. Yeah. What brought you on to this? So actually, it's so funny. So I had a conversation with David Epstein who wrote Range, which is a wonderful book. I don't know if you've read it yet, but it's amazing. Oh, there it's behind you. I actually think I still have it. It's still right there up on my bookshelf because we're taping the conversation. So I put it out for him. And he asked me something very similar. And I will say it hadn't occurred to me beforehand. He said, so, and he held the book up. He said, just quit across the front. Like, that was pretty bold because, you know, who wants to buy a book called quit? Because it is, you know, we do have such negative connotations about it. And it was the first time I thought, oh, maybe I should have named it something different for one second. But then I was like, no, that's the point. So this is a situation where actually, so I'm not, I don't think I'm particularly good at titling things. And with thinking in bets, I pitched a completely different title, which let me tell you was terrible. And my editor is the one who actually was like, what do you think about calling it thinking in bets? And I was like, oh, okay, sounds good. And she also titled how to decide. But with quit, from the moment that I thought of the book, I said, I want to write a book called quit. I love it. Because it's the opposite of grit. So what else should you call it? And my whole point is that we have such a negative feeling. It evokes such negative emotions. This idea of quitting or calling somebody a quitter. Like if I call you a quitter, I'm calling you a loser. That I wanted to put it front and center on the front of the book, let people know that this is not just okay, but it's necessary. You have to quit a lot in order to have a good life, in order to achieve happiness, in order to be successful in any way that you define. So I now sit, now you've said it and David said it as well in the back of my mind. I'm like, because he says, I'm just imagining like being in an airport and seeing just quit sitting there and our people, you know, it's a little bit jarring. But I think that that was kind of the point because I'm really trying to rehabilitate the word. So and I think, I think it's needed as well. And what I thought was lovely, you mentioned the grit book there and you're, I think, really good friends with the author, is that right? Yeah, so I mean, yeah, I know her and somebody said to me, I mean, a few people have said to me, oh, I'd like to see you debate Angela Duckworth. Yeah. And I said, well, that would be silly because we'd agree. You know, because I think the problem is, it's not that Angela didn't say anything brilliant. Her work is brilliant. People should buy that book. It's a really good book. It's that partly because of our bias toward persevering and our bias against quitting, people, I think, misinterpret. Like they don't, they don't see the nuance in what she's saying because she's not saying perseverance period is a virtue. What she's saying is you have to stick to things that are worthwhile, even if they're hard. And that's a really important character trait. Like if a kid is playing a football game and they have a really bad day on the pitch and they walk off and they say, I want to quit, it behooves us as parents to say you just had a bad day and you need to sort of look at what the long run expectation is and you have to sort of get through those ups and downs because you really love this game and you ought to keep playing at least for now. And that's true for adults too. Like one bad day at the office shouldn't make you quit. But she would also agree that if your boss is toxic, you should quit. If you get a concussion on the pitch, you should walk off the field. You shouldn't keep playing. Them being gritty is a bad idea. And there's all sorts of situations where we can say that. So we're agreeing. What I'm saying is stop saying that the only thing that's good is perseverance and somehow walking away from things is bad because both of them need to work together. I agree. And I thought it was lovely that you said in the book, there's no word in the dictionary for quittiness. No, but it sticks to things like grittiness. Grittiness, that's a good thing. But nobody says, oh, I've got quittiness. The words that we use shape us so much in our lives and it's so interesting. And when I was reading it, one of the questions I don't know whether you looked into is, often in life, words in different languages have a slightly different meaning or background. So I know that in English, quitting has a lot of negative connotations to it. Did you find out in other languages, is that the same? Is it pretty universal? So I didn't look at other languages, but I do know that the biases that we're talking about are quite strong. So it doesn't really matter what culture you're in. These types of biases against quitting, and there are many, which I'm sure that we'll get into, are quite universal. So I would expect that that would be reflected in the language also. But I don't know. If you're listening to this, email us and let us know. Let us know, right? If you think about it, look, there is no culture where people, for example, get sent into war. And that's really part of human history. And obviously, you have to have a lot of grit in order to be able to do that. It behooves whoever the leadership is to be instilling grit. And the people who are gritty and triumph are the heroes of the story. Even often, the people who are gritty and don't triumph are the heroes of the story. They're just the heroes. And I don't think that that's particular to us, because you can look at ancient texts, and you can see that kind of reflected in those texts as well. Yeah, it makes sense. And you start the book with this marvellous story about Muhammad Ali, the famous boxer. And you were showing me the cover of your U.S. edition of the book, even as it has the boxing gloves on it. That's the specific thing that I'm just watching. There you go. So if you're in the U.S., look out for that cover. And I thought that was fascinating. I actually didn't... Weirdly, I didn't know that story. I knew about the success that he had with Rumble in the Jungle. And then I didn't know any of the other stuff. But yeah, I don't know whether it really is. Do you know why you didn't know any of the other stuff? Because I guess he didn't win. Right. Well, because we only hear the stories of the people who stick it out. And particularly, we really particularly love stories of the people who stick it out and overcome very long odds. And what happens after that we don't really remember. So I think this is actually a really good example of why grit is good, but also why quit is good. So because it's all kind of embodied in one human being. So Muhammad Ali, for those who aren't familiar with born Cassius Clay, and he won the heavyweight title against Sonny Liston when he was still Cassius Clay. So he was heavyweight champion in the world. And then he converted to Islam and became Muhammad Ali. And as part of that, he objected to the Vietnam War. So he refused to enlist. And he was stripped of his heavyweight title. So that went on for a few years. And then when they finally allowed him to get a license and to be able to fight again, took him four years to earn a title shot. Because it wasn't like, oh, you're Muhammad Ali, you were champion before. So now you're going to bypass the whole process. He still had to fight his way up in order to earn the title fight. So by the time he earned the title fight, he was already in his 30s. And as you know, for a boxer, that's quite old. And the title fight was against a guy named George Foreman. And George Foreman was formidable. I mean, first of all, he's huge. And second of all, his fights would kind of go like this. Someone would get in the ring with him. He'd punch them. They'd fall down and the fight would be over. And he was undefeated. So he was just really like a beast. And of course, Muhammad Ali at that point is older. Now, when he was younger, the whole thing with him was float like a butterfly, a sting like a bee. Because he was so fast that you kind of couldn't touch him. And then he would come in and get you. But he's older now and he isn't that fast. So he comes in and he uses a different strategy, which is rope a dope, which is basically leaning against the ropes, allowing George Foreman to pummel him until George Foreman tired himself out. So that's what he does. This goes on for rounds and rounds and rounds and rounds and rounds and rounds. And he ends up winning the fight by time. Because I mean, it was actually an interesting strategy because George Foreman's fights like never went past a couple of rounds. So endurance wasn't his strength. So Muhammad Ali decided, I'm going to take the punches and I'm going to endure. He's going to tire himself out. And then that's how I'm going to win the fight. And it worked. So that was the rumble in the jungle. But what happens after that is actually really tragic. So somewhat soon after that, his medical reports are coming back because now his new style is to take punches. Right? So his medical reports start coming back and they're showing damage, in particular damage to his kidneys. And they're starting to worry about some neurological damage. So Teddy Brenner, who was the fight promoter at Madison Square Garden, says to him, like, I really think that you need to hang up your gloves because he's concerned. In his words, what he says is, I didn't want to know if he came up to me and he didn't even know who I was one day. Because they were very good friends. I didn't want to know that I was part of that. Yeah. So he says to him, I think that you need to quit. So Muhammad Ali refuses. And Teddy Brenner quits him. Says, I'm not going to host your fights anymore then. Because he doesn't, he does not want to be part of this. So then Ferdy Pacheco, whose Ali's fight doctor gets a very bad report on his kidneys. And he too goes to Ali and says, look, I really think you need to quit. Ali again refuses. And Ferdy Pacheco quits him. At which point, he has a series of like really sad fights. He starts, it's, it starts to become hard for him to get licensed. He does fight in Las Vegas. Well, he loses to Leon Sphinx on, it was like Leon Sphinx is like seven fight, seventh fight in his whole life. But he also has a fight against Larry Holmes, which is so horrible. Holmes delivers him such a beating that Holmes cries after the match. This was a very famous incident that occurred because he was so upset because Muhammad Ali was obviously like one of his heroes and it was just awful for him. So now he can't even get licensed in the US, which just so you know about boxing standards at that time is like impossible because it's just like race to the bottom standards for each state to host fights. He ends up fighting in the Philippines and just a complete tragedy of a fight card where they've got one set of gloves to share among everybody. And they're using a cowbell to signal the rounds and that was kind of it for him. And then, and then we know what happened after that, which was really bad physical decline. He ends up with Parkinson's syndrome, you know, and obviously it's really severe neurological damage that affects the quality of his life for the rest of his life. And here, that's the thing about grit. Like when everybody's telling you, no, it's true that you might see something that other people don't see. And I think in the case of him really believing that he could beat George Foreman, that was probably the case. Like he had a strategy. He felt like he had figured something out that other people couldn't see. And even though he was an underdog, he thought he could do it. And that's really the amazing thing about grit, right? Is it can get you to stick to that stuff and really try to get it done. The problem is though that taken too far, like it does sometimes you do see what the world doesn't see. But when the world is screaming at you and your friends are quitting you, like you've got to pay attention to those signals. And at that point, grit becomes folly, right? It really becomes a vice. And that's the lesson is we think that grit is a virtue and quit as a vice. But the opposite of a great virtue is also a great virtue. And you need to balance out the two. Yeah, it's brilliant. And it's such a lovely story. I think in the book which I found was that I was a great virtue. In the book which I found was lovely is you have you use such a lovely wide variety of stories. I know a lot of people who listen to this podcast are not heavyweight champion boxers. But there's a lot of people who run startups or doing their own ideas. And it was lovely to hear the story as well. There was one about the founding of Slack. Which was started from a computer game called Glitch, if I remember rightly. Yes. Well, the game itself was called the game. Never had this, but the company was called Glitch. Yeah, the company is called Glitch. Sorry, yes. Thank you. And then that was lovely because it was a beautiful story of he basically he quit the company that they read. Even think you were saying they had six million dollars left still in the bank. And he woke up one morning and just goes look we're not going to do this anymore. And I mean that just boggled my mind the bravery to be able to do that. And then the amazing thing that came from it. I'm so glad you use the word bravery. So I want to dig into that a little bit. So I think that we think about the people who persevere the really hard times as the brave ones. And in fact, you know, if you if you look up synonyms for like perseverance grit, that kind of thing, you'll see words like bravery heroism. Because we think of those people as the heroes of the story. We think think, you know, when you when you think about someone gritting it out, you're thinking about somebody who's brave. And when we think about quitters, we think about cowards and people who are weak world. In fact, there's a very old world word called paltrune from the 1800s, which was a synonym for a quitter. And if you called somebody a paltrune back in the day, it was actually grounds for a duel. That was how bad an insult it was. So very famously in the US, Andrew Jackson was called a paltrune in a paper. So it was a public publicly called a paltrune. He challenged the guy to a duel, shot him dead and then became president of the United States. Wow. Like because everybody was like, well, I mean, you know, he called you a paltrune. What could you do? Obviously you had to kill the guy. But you mentioned bravery, right? And so why like think about so for Stuart Butterfield. So so for people to understand this story. So he he really has this dream of creating an online multiplayer, like massive multiplayer cooperative world building game. So he found this company called Glitch. It was the second company he had founded. And he developed this game called Game Never Ending. And he's got great backers. Andreessen Horowitz to sell those are two really big venture firms in the US. And as you said, flush with cash, he's got 6 million in the bank. And critics like freaking love this game. They love it. They're like it's Dr. Seuss meets Monty Python was the way that they described it. It was like beautiful. And he's actually got like 5,000 die hard users. And by 5,000 die hard users, I mean, they use the game. They're playing 20 hours or more a week. OK, so those are the people who are obviously going to generate income for the game. The problem was that for every hundred people who came to the game, around 95 to 99 of them played for seven minutes and left. So they have a little bit of a problem, obviously, with like customer acquisition. At this point, they've only been doing like PR and letting the critics, you know, who are viewing the game, let people know about it. So they decide collectively that the investors and his co-founders to do a big marketing push. And so for six weeks, they do paid marketing. And they're really growing their users 6% week over week. And this is in 2012. And then on the weekend of November 11th and 12th of that year, they have their biggest customer acquisition weekend ever. He goes to bed on Sunday night, has a very restless night on Monday morning, wakes up and writes an email to his co-founders and investors. I woke up this morning with the dead certainty that Glitch is dead. It's over. So what's going on? Because, you know, this is really weird because there's so many users at this point. And obviously, his co-founders believe in it. His investors believe in it. And they've got $6 million in the bank. And he explained it to him that if they were to continue to acquire users at the rate that they were, it would still be 31 weeks to break even. And that was a ridiculous assumption. Because when you're doing paid marketing, you start to saturate the market. And that they just, it was just, you had to get too many people to come try it to get the ones who would stick. And it was never going to be a venture scale business. But as you point out, how is quitting their cowardice? That's bravery. Because he knew that his investors weren't going to see it the way he saw it. He knew that his co-founders weren't going to see it the way they saw it. And in fact, they didn't. They thought he was kind of nuts. And I asked him actually, like, did you ever convince them? And he said, well, I don't know. And I don't think it really mattered because if I didn't want to do it, they just sort of figured that was it. But he saw something. I mean, this is the thing, right? Muhammad Ali saw something other people didn't see, that he could be George Forman. Stuart Butterfield now sees something that other people can't see, which is this business is not a business, at least not at the scale that they want it to be. And he shuts it down when everybody thinks he's nuts. And he knows everybody thinks he's nuts. Because he's doing it at a time when it's not so certain that it's going to fail, that other people can surely see it. And he actually said that he realized in retrospect, that he should have shut it down six weeks earlier before they ever did the marketing push. But he was so afraid that people would think that he had just gotten bored with it, or had lost interest or was capricious, that he himself wanted to accumulate a little bit more certainty before he actually said no. So that's an act of bravery, right? And not only do I think it's an act of bravery because you have to worry about what other people are going to say about you, it's an act of bravery because it's the moment you go from failing to having failed. That is the moment that you admit defeat, that you'd say, I can never make this work, that you're giving up the cause. That's really brave to walk away in that situation. It's also an act of bravery because you're wandering into the wilderness. What's next? Am I going to find something else to do? If I quit my job, will I find another one? Will I like that? What if I break up with my relationship? Maybe I'm going to end up alone for the rest of my life. Those are all really, really scary things. So when you quit, it is an act of bravery. It is courageous. In some ways I think more courageous than sticking to it because if you stick to it, you know everybody's going to clap and admire you. That's the thing about it, right? And I think that we really need to flip the script on that and realize that. So now as a Coda, as you mentioned, two days later, he said, oh, we have this internal communication tool that people seem to really like. Maybe we should develop that. And that, of course, becomes Slack. He didn't even have a name at the time. He named it Searchable Log of All Company Knowledge. That becomes Slack. And we know that that works out really well. The temptation is that it's like a positive story about quitting because he developed Slack. But honestly, if he had never developed anything after that, it would still be a great story because he didn't waste his employees' time. He didn't waste his own time. He didn't waste his investor's money. And he did something incredibly brave all on its own. You mentioned something in a second ago that stood out. And I remember I noted it down this link to talk to you about. And there's this idea of uncertainty and that humans naturally, anything that's uncertain, we despise. Yes, which is horrible because everything is uncertain. Right. And we teach a lot of behavioral science courses with people like Rory Sutherland. And an example he sometimes gives is when you're waiting for a train or waiting for a taxi, if you have no idea when it's going to come, you get really angry. But if you know that it's coming in five, 10 minutes, it's fine. And I think it's, in the book, you talk about it as... If you quit something, you have to be able to be happy with that uncertainty because you're not going to see it through so you don't know what the outcome will be. And as humans, I think we sometimes really struggle with that. Yeah. And you gave... I mean, I think you give lots of amazing examples in the book. And I think it was one where you said... I think it was a friend of yours who was a doctor who was not sure whether to quit her job or take a new job. And the job was all encompassing ER, emergency, doctor on call, 24 hours a day, not seeing her family. Yeah. I don't know whether it was worth... Yeah. So, okay. So here's why quitting is such an incredibly valuable skill to develop, be good at exercising that option. Right. As you said, whenever we make any decision, almost any decision, there's a lot of uncertainty. We're making those decisions under conditions of uncertainty. One is just luck, congestive fluency. I'll come in a way that we can't predict very well. But also, there's hidden information, right? So, we know very little in comparison to all there is to be known, generally, when we make decisions. And what that means is that after we start something, we're going to learn new stuff. So, Chris, I'm sure you've had that feeling. I wish I knew then what I know now. A hundred percent. Right. Yeah. So, that's that feeling of, well, when I made the decision, I didn't know what I needed to know. And now I learned new things. And man, if I had known that then, maybe I would have made a different choice. So, here's where quitting becomes so valuable, because you can make a different choice, even after you started it. So, when you learn the new information, you can switch like for Stewart Butterfield, right? It's like when he creates this beautiful game that his prediction is people are going to love, you know, and everybody's going to be really into it. And then it turns out that people aren't as into it as he thought he could quit. Okay. So, that's the greatness of having that option. Imagine if you had to marry the first person you ever dated. That would be rough. Imagine if the first job you took out of like, you know, university you had to stick with, you weren't allowed to switch careers or jobs or, you know, I mean, this would be really hard for us as decision makers. But lucky for us, we have this option to change our mind for most things. The problem is that the very uncertainty that we feel when we're entering a decision, we also, it also influences when we exit. Yeah. But it's asymmetric the way that that uncertainty bothers us. Okay. So, as you said, we kind of want to know how the story ends. And the story in this case is what you've already started. Because that feeling of what if is really hard for us, like if we switch and then we're like, what if I had stayed? What if I had married my college sweetheart? What if I hadn't quit my job? What if I, you know, I know there was a huge snowstorm on the top of Everest, but what if I kept going? Maybe I would have turned it around. Or like in the case of Stuart Butterfield, like, well, I had 6 million in the bank. What if I kept going? Maybe all of a sudden the game would have caught on. Right? These are really hard things for us to live with. And the only way for us to know for sure is to stick with what we're doing. And what that means is that, unlike Stuart Butterfield, who is definitely the exception here, we'll usually keep going with things until it's a dead certainty that it can't work. Because when you think about, like, but if other people are going to think that I'm weak-willed, well, but not if I say, but I fell into a crevasse, obviously I couldn't keep climbing, you know, or I used all my vacation days and all of my sick days. And I was missing work because my boss was so toxic, I couldn't take it anymore. Then people are like, oh, sure, of course you should have quit, right? Or if you, like, you see this with sports athletes all the time, right? Like, when a footballer has that last season where they're just terrible, everybody agrees at that point that they should quit. But when someone quits at the top of the game, we're all like, right? So we can sort of feel that is that, you know, Richard Thaler, who is a Nobel laureate, so I really like to quote things that Nobel laureates said, said, usually the only time we're willing to quit is when it's no longer a choice. Meaning that we've already butted up against the dead certainty that there's nothing else. Probably see that a lot in relationships, I'd imagine. Right, exactly. Like, there's literally, it's just like, there's no other way, exactly. So, okay, so Sarah Olson Martinez was someone who actually reached out to me through my website. And so, and by the way, people can do that. You can go to antidook.com and write me. I try to respond to everyone. I am nowhere near perfect, but I do make an attempt. But so she wrote me and she said, oh, that she was having trouble with the decision about whether to quit her job. I happened to be in the middle of writing a book called Quit. And so I was like, hey, do you want to get on a Zoom? So I did. And so she was somebody who had been in the R-Doc and that had been her training. And she then got promoted to be a hospital administrator. And the thing about being in a R-Doc is it's like typical shift work, right? So as soon as you're done with the shift, you go home and that's it. Your work does not come home with you. But when you're an administrator, that's not the case and your work follows you home. And her love was really actually being in the ER. And she was down to about six shifts a month in the R-Doc and the rest of her time was spent with administration and she was miserable. And the way she described it to me, like she had two small children, that it was just constant emails and her phone dinging at her. She wasn't able to spend any time. Like her kids were saying, like you just ignore me. Like all you do is look at your phone. And so that was like really unhappy for her. Plus she wasn't doing the thing that she loved in the first place. And also like the environment had changed because it was during the pandemic. Reimbursements had changed, things like that. Like the healthcare system and reimbursements and things like that in America is not the best. So she just wasn't like, she was incredibly unhappy. And she had been unhappy for years. So this gets us a little bit to that like budding up against certainty, right? Before you're willing to actually walk away. So I was a little confused that she had a question about whether she should quit, particularly because she had another job lined up which does take away some of that uncertainty that we're afraid of. So I said to her, so why aren't you quitting? Because I was confused. And she kind of said two things that I think are really important. One is I've put, well actually said three things. The first was I've put so much time, like I've done all this training. I have so much of me like in this job. And that I think is very common when you hear people like, why haven't you left the relationship? I put so much time into it. Like I don't want to waste what I've already put into it. Okay, but that's already gone. And the question is, are you going to keep wasting your time going forward? But that's a very strong feeling that we got. That's a pretty typical sort of sunk cost fallacy kind of problem. The second thing she said is the other E-docs are going to think that I'm a wuss. And the people who believed in me, who promoted to me as the administrator, are going to be mad at me. Okay, so this gets a little into the Stewart Butterfield territory. He says he waited six weeks longer than he really should have. Because he thought that people were going to think it was bored or capricious or just lost interest for no reason. And he's sort of trying to defend against those negative feelings that he thinks that people are going to have. And so is she. She's saying they're going to, you know, I mean, the thing about, you know, ER docs are a little bit like Navy SEALs over here, right? Like a lot of their, you know, ethos is grit. That's where they get a lot of their identity from. And she was worried they were going to think she had given up, right? And that she had abandoned them. So that was also a big problem. But then this was the really telling one. I said, okay, well, what else? And she said, well, what if I take the new job? And I don't like that one either. So I was like, okay, I kind of see the problem here. So I said, okay, well, let me ask you a question. Imagine it's a year from now and you stay in your current job. What's the probability that you're going to be happy? She said zero percent. Okay, so here we are, right? Here we are, we're in the crevasse already. So that's kind of the point, right? She'd been thinking about it for a long time, but before she actually got to sort of this point where she was maybe going to pull the trigger, it's a hundred percent that she's going to be unhappy in a year. So that's what Richard Taylor is saying. It's no longer a choice because you already, it's like it's already a dead certainty at this point, right? So I was like, okay, so let's say you take this new job. What are the chances in a year that you'll be happy? And she said, well, I don't know. Like I haven't been taking the job. I mean, I've done, I don't know. And I was like, well, just take a guess. She said, I guess 50-50. She said, well, it's 50 percent greater than zero. And her face, she was just like, oh, it took that. And then she saw it. Right, then she saw it. She quit, she took the new job. Last I checked, she was really happy because we checked back in with each other. But this is where we see this need for certainty. Is asymmetric. That what we want to be certain about is the thing we're already doing, right? So we need to know that we have no hope. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is that we're willing to tolerate really bad situations because we're uncertain about whether the other thing is going to work out. So when we think about like anticipating the regret we might feel about a choice, the regret we'll feel is about the thing we switched to, if that doesn't work out, much more so than sort of the level of tolerance that we have for being in a miserable situation once we've already started it. It's so powerful. I mean, I guess it's those, it will firstly, well done and bravo for helping that lovely lady. It's always nice to help people. There's a lesson in that. If you write to me cross your fingers that it's a topic that I happen to be writing a book about because they'll get on the Zoom with you. And you were saying earlier that Liz Truss wrote to you just last night. Just last night. And I said, listen, I've got a book for you. By the way, we've been fascinated over here in America watching what's been going on. It's a lovely experiment. You don't need a soap opera or anything like that anymore. Just turn on the UK news. The thing which I was going to ask you, which I guess is related is what would be some of your advice to people? What kind of things can they ask themselves or look out for to know when they perhaps should be quitting or at least thinking about it? Yeah. So, okay. So let me just say this first of all. Usually by the time you quit, it's already way later than you should have. So if you quit at the right time, it's going to feel like it's too early. So I think that you can see that was to a Butterfield, right? Like he even feels he quit too late, but everybody felt like it was too early. So he's really unusual in that. So this is, I think this is something really key is that at the point that you experience it as a close call, think about Sarah Olsen Martinez. She thought she had a close call, but I think that you can tell that this was not close. Right? But she experienced it as a close call. And Steven Leavitt, who wrote the book Freakonomics, actually did a super fun that he put up a website where people could go and be like, should I quit my job or should I stay? Should I stay in my relationship or not? It's the coin flip, right? Yeah. And he invited people to flip a coin to decide for them. So let's agree that if you're willing to flip a coin, which is obviously by definition 50-50, that you must think that the choice itself is 50-50. Meaning, and so let's translate that into what that means. And it's the way that I translated it for Sarah, was you think that it's equally likely you'll be happy if you stay, then if you go. Which is why I put it into happiness terms for her. So he asked said, so on a scale of one to 10, how happy you are, they rated it. And then flip the coin. And it's like, you should quit your job or you should stay in your job. And so they would go and do that. He would check in with everybody two and six months later and again, ask them how happy are you now? And what he found was that it wasn't 50-50 at all, that the quitters were happier. So the first thing to understand is if you're thinking about quitting, it's actually quite likely that you're already a little late to the decision. All right. That's great advice. Right. So that's like just advice number one, is just realize that. And you know, there's a management heuristic anyway, like the first time you think about firing it, somebody is the moment that you should fire them. Nobody does that though. So, okay, but let's now let's take into account like just sort of what the human condition is, right? That that's really hard to do because we do have these problems of the first time we think about quitting, we're wondering like, did I just have a bad day? You know, maybe I'm just not, I need to tough it out, like that kind of stuff. So we wanted to sort of take that into account so that you can feel at peace with your quitting. So the first time you think about quitting, there are two things you should do. The first is to set kill criteria for yourself. So kill criteria, some combination of a state and a date. So the date would be, I'm in this situation, let's see, it's a job that you hate, let's say. How long do I feel like I can tolerate this situation for? So that's going to be the date. So you're setting a deadline for yourself. So let's say you say, I can deal with this for two more months. All right. So that's your date. So now the question is, what's the state? So say to yourself, okay, imagine it's two months from now, what are the signals I might be seeing? What are the things that might be occurring that would tell me that I should walk away, that things have not gotten better and I'm still miserable? So you write down what those things are, and then you can also set benchmarks, like what are the things that would tell me that things are better? Okay, so you literally write that stuff down, and then you can take the step of saying what would be the inputs to that, like maybe I should have a conversation with my boss. All right, so you're trying to get to, you're not a passive person. Okay, you set that down, and then in two months, if you're seeing those signals that you should walk away, then you should quit. If you're seeing the things that things have turned around, that's great, and you should set new kill criteria. Okay, right, so in three months, I'm going to see if this situation is persisting. The reason why that's really helpful is this. We have the intuition that when we see those signals, we're going to react rationally to them, but we know that that's not true, right? We know that from Muhammad Ali, for one thing. We know that from all the people who have perished on the top of Everest. We know that from our friends, because we see our friends in relationships that we know they should walk away from, or jobs we know they should walk away from, or projects that should have been shut down a long time ago, and we can see that even though the signals are quite obvious, that they're not actually paying attention to them, and then I'm sure, Chris, you've been in this situation, someone comes and complains to you, let's say it's like a relationship or a job, they tell you, oh, I'm so happy, blah, blah, I'm really thinking that maybe I'm going to walk away, and then you see them three months later, and they say, oh, I'm really unhappy, I'm really thinking I should walk away, and then you see them three months later, and literally at some point, you're not allowed to have this conversation with me anymore. Why? Because they're relying on themselves to react rationally in the moment. So instead of saying when I'm in it, like when I'm having to face the decision down, I'm going to rely on myself to actually pay attention to those signals and walk away, instead say in advance, when you're not in it, what are those signals? And I'm going to make a pre-commitment to walk away when I see those. That will actually really improve your quitting decision. It will also make you more comfortable with the decision. This is both from the standpoint of someone who might be quitting, or for example, an employer, when an employer fires somebody, they're quitting the employment relationship. It's a form of quitting, and it makes it more comfortable for an employer as well. It makes it easier for the employee because you're sort of coming together and understanding what the expectations are that will cause you to walk away. So that's the first thing to do, and that's called Kill Criteria, a very powerful tool. And the second thing is get someone to help you. So instead of just going, like instead of me just going and complaining to Chris, what I ought to do instead is say, Chris, I think I'm really unhappy. You're someone who I feel like you have my best interest at heart. I don't want you to tell me what I want to hear or you think I want to hear, which is for you to cheerlead me. Like when I say, I know I can turn around for you to say, I know you can, which is what we want to do, right? Like we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. And instead for me to say to you, I'm giving you permission, Chris, to tell me what you actually see and to help me with this decision. So now you can say, well, it does seem like things aren't going well. Do you want to set some kill criteria? And now we've created a partnership where you're going to hold me accountable to those things. So when we revisit for whatever the deadline is that we've set, we can actually look and sort through. And you can remind me, like you said, if this was still happening, that you were going to actually quit. And that's going to help me get to that decision a lot more quickly as well. So those are really like the two best strategies for when that thought crashes your mind, set a deadline, make it a relatively short timeline, really lay out what are those benchmarks and get someone to help you with the decision. Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of sort of the greatest mentors I've ever been lucky enough to have kind of, have given me that permission. They've gone okay. Let's set a criteria in a deadline and talk about this in a week's time. And if you're still feeling this way, then you know what you've got to do. Right. And this is something good for parents too, right? Like, I mean, as parents, we obviously want to instill grit in our kids, right? So, you know, and we have the problem as parents of saying, you know, is my kid just, you know, just upset because they had a bad day, right? Or is this something that really is making them unhappy? And if I'm thinking about something that I'd like them to do, I ought to switch them to something else. So, you know, an example would be, and I think that this is a problem that we get into is that whatever the thing that we choose to do as an expression of the actual goal that we have, the thing we choose to do becomes the object. So, an example of that would be like, we'd all like our children to finish school, right? So, we'd like them to get all the way through sixth form. Do you know why I know that? Because I went to a school in the U.S. where we had forms. So, I got all the way, I graduated after sixth form myself. So, we'd like that to happen, right? So, now you're sort of going around and you're choosing schools. And the school that you choose is actually a method to help your child achieve the goal of finishing school in general, not necessarily that school. But then what happens when your child is unhappy at that school is you have this tendency to want to help them to push through it, right? Like, you know, where we think like, no, you have to persevere. I have to help you develop this grip muscle and you're telling them they have to stay in that school. But why? As long as they're switching to a different school, it's not like they're not being great. They're still going to achieve their goal. That would be true also like if you want them to play sports, right? And they try football and for whatever reason, they're like super uncoordinated or whatever, you know? And it would be better if they were a swimmer. But you're making them continue because now football has become the object as opposed to the actual object, which was I want them to do a sport. Okay, so for parents, now how can we do this? We can also apply this for ourselves. If our child comes home and they're really miserable at school, you say, okay, like maybe it's toward the end of the term or something. You say, let's see how it goes, you know, toward the end of the term. What is it that's making you unhappy? Maybe they're being bullied or something like that. And you say, okay, let's see if that's still persisting. I'm going to go talk to the school administrators. Maybe I'm going to talk to the parents of the person who's bullying you. Try to figure that out. But then let's list out what would tell us that things were better. What would tell us that things are worse. And then understand it doesn't mean that you get to quit full stop. It means that we're going to start going on a search for another school because I'm sorry, bud, but you got to finish school, right? And same thing, like you had a bad day at football or you feel like you're uncoordinated. There's five more games in the season. Let's look at how you're feeling at the end of those five games. And then if you're not meeting the criteria that would tell us that you should continue, if you're meeting the criteria that tell us you should quit, then we have to figure out another sport for you and take the learnings from what it was that you hated about football. Right. And figure out what the right sport for you to try is because I'm sorry, you're going to have to stick with physical activity. Yeah. Right. It's fascinating as well. And I don't know whether it's the same in your life, but as you were talking, I was trying to think back and at all the times when I've had those conversations with people when they come up and said, I'm really unhappy with something and I want to quit something. And then eventually, hopefully they do make the decision and do quit. But it's always like two years later after you're like, stop having this conversation with me. But I can't think of any examples where it didn't end up better. I mean, I'm sure that there are a few, but I think by and by, I would imagine if you looked at, you know, if there was a problem and you changed, would imagine statistically much more likely to be in a happier, healthier place. Because I think psychologically, I would imagine we also, up to a point, make it so that we're happy with our choice. Like once you've... So I think that's true. I also think that we're much more afraid, like loss aversion is just the thing, right? That when we're thinking about starting something, we're very focused on the losses, the potential losses, the probability that we might lose at it. Now, obviously, there are losses, potential losses associated with the path we're already on, very often quite certain ones, like in the case of Sarah Ulster Martinez. But loss aversion is asymmetric in that way. Loss aversion prevents us from starting things. So if we've already started something, and we're already on that path, loss aversion doesn't get recruited in the same way. Because when you quit something, it's usually to start something new. And so we get very focused on the losses associated with starting something new. But I think that in reality, the reason why, when you look back and you say, can I think of any example where someone was unhappier, and the answer is no, it's actually a little recursive in nature, for the reason that it's because we won't quit until it's basically a near certainty that you would have to be happier. That's the thing. And that's way after we should have quit in the first place. So Sarah Ulster Martinez was incredibly unhappy for like three years before she got to that decision to actually walk away. So how could it be that she wouldn't be happier? Like not just on average, but like it's got to be greater than 0%, right? So I think that in order to help us with that problem, we need to start really imagining the alternative. So one of the things I do with like executives that I coach, where they're really worried about firing someone. So let's say that they're a startup in growth, growth period phase, and they're just worried about having that role empty. Yeah. Having no one in that role. And what I'll say to them is, so they'll go, wow, but what happens? But then we'll have nobody in the role. And I just rephrase it and say, okay, well, what's worse? Having this person in the role or nobody. And we actually walked through that, right? Because I said this person is creating problems on the team. I think that the people on their team are now flight risks. Because this person is not doing their job. They've maybe quiet quit, which really I hate that term because it's not quitting. It's staying in your job and just not doing it. You know, and so they're creating like a somewhat toxic environment. And let's remember that when they're in that role, they're a blocker. Because naturally when people leave a role, other people knowing that it's temporary will come in and pick up that slap. But they can't do it when someone is sitting there. And then they're just pissed because the job is not getting done, right? So we kind of walk through that. And then they have this realization like, no, nobody in the role is actually better than this person in the role. And it helps them to get to that decision. And it's the true with like a relationship, right? Where they're like, well, what if I'm alone? It's like, well, what if like, are you happy now? No. Okay. So do you think they're probably and assuming alone is temporary? Don't you think that there's a better chance that you can find happiness being alone? And when you phrase it that way, they go, oh, wait, yeah. I'm actually at this point, I think I would be happier alone. So you have to sort of focus them over on what, what are they losing to the decision to stick? And, and this gets to something I think that is so important for people to understand is that we think that quitting is going to stop our progress, but it actually speeds us up. It speeds us up when quitting is right. Because when we're stuck in a dead end job or a bad relationship, is that helping us to gain ground toward what our ultimate goal is, which I assume is happiness and fulfillment and a good life? No, of course not. It's causing us to lose ground. So then you would want to switch because whatever path you're on is going to have a higher probability of getting you to actually achieve your goals in the same way that if you're on a road and a truck is overturned on the, on the road and traffic is not moving, you ought to exit right away in order to get to where you want to go faster. That's also true of quitting. If you're on a path that isn't going well, you should quit to some, you know, and switch to something that's actually going to be better. And this is, this is why I say quitting is so necessary for success. And one of the things that I think is so important for people to really internalize is this phrase, life's too short. So when you're sitting in that miserable relationship and you're afraid of all the things that come with walking away from it, right? The time I've wasted my time and I put so much time into this thing and what if I'm alone and what if I go to a new relationship and that doesn't work out, even though the one you're in, it's a dead certainty, you've tried couples counseling, you've been together for a long time, it's been bad for a long time. What you have to say to yourself is my life's too short because the forces that are keeping me in it, do I want to waste another year of my life? Do if I'm unhappy at 35, do I want to wake up at 45 and have had 10 more miserable years? Or do I want to switch? Because my life is really short. And we owe it to all of ourselves to be brave and to walk away from the things that aren't working so that we can go do things that are. It's amazing, so powerful. I've got so many other questions, but I know that we're already running out of time. It's okay, I have a little extra if you want. It's okay, I've got time on the back end. I'll be very quick. No, it's all good. The thing which we won't talk about, which is just one more reason why you need to go and read the book is that you also, particularly around work, you say that there are a few companies that actually actively encourage quitting and you give this lovely story about Astro Teller and Google X, which is fantastic. So don't tell the story, but instead anyone is listening. Go read the book, it's really good. And then you'll also learn about monkeys and pedestals and getting monkeys back in the room. Yeah, because monkeys and pedals, this is super fun. You'll also learn about forced quitting, which I think is great. And the part of the book that I really love that people should go check out is that goals are not necessarily good. Yes, I love that. Which is very counterintuitive, but goals can really mess you up. Yeah, and I instinctively have a real issue. You love hate relationship with girls because I feel like they're too static and life changes and moves. And I think you kind of alluded to that in the book. Well, I mean, it's the school problem, right? If you have a goal, a broad goal for somebody to finish school, then what happens is that you figure out like what's the way that I want to achieve this and now you put them in a school and it becomes about finishing that school. Right, right. And so then what happens is that you keep going toward the finish line come what may. So my favorite example of that actually comes from the 2019 London Marathon, a woman named Shyvana O'Keefe who was running the marathon in mile eight, she broke her leg, her fibula bone snapped. So one would assume that she would stop running, but she did not. And she actually finished the race, as did, by the way, three other people who broke stuff in that same marathon. I mean, because this happens in every single marathon. And so the question is like, why? And the answer is because there was a finish line. So the problem we have is that while eight miles is certainly like a triumph in the context of a 5k, you've actually run more, right? Yeah. It's a failure in the context of a marathon because you set that finish line. And what happens when we set finish lines is that we don't measure our progress like the eight miles that we ran. We're thinking about the 18.2 miles that we haven't run. And if you quit the race, you're going to have to take that loss. In other words, the loss being how short you are of whatever the final goal is. And so that is why she keeps running. And that's true of any goal, whether it's like a project that you're trying to complete or a product that you're trying to develop, or you have your child in school, you've started them in football, or for yourself, anything like that. It's very hard for us to walk away when we haven't actually achieved the goal, even when the facts on the ground have changed. It's broke or led. The world is telling you you're over budget and you've blown your timelines and your customers don't even want the product. But yeah, just keep going until you have no choice but to quit or you've reached the goal. And that's really bad. But here's the thing that I want to say because I want to go back to this bravery thing. All right, I'm going to say this is true for me, but I want to ask you when you hear the story about Shavon O'Keefe finishing that marathon on a broken leg, is there a part of you that's like, wow, that's really badass? I think it's nuts. But like kind of badass, right? No, I mean, look, it's a fine line between bravery and stupidity, I think. Well, that's true. That's true. But I think that I know for me there's a small part of me that's like, oh, man. Oh, yeah, no, I agree. I wish I was that cool. Yeah, amazing. Right. But we shouldn't think that, as you said, because she's sacrificing possibly, this is a problem of opportunity cost, right? She's sacrificing maybe ever being able to run a marathon again because that's a good way to get a compound fracture. So when the medical tent, it's like Muhammad Ali, when the medical tent is like, no, stop running, you really have to stop. You're going to do permanent damage. And you may end up with permanent injury. Like you ought to walk away. And yet when she keeps running, the newspaper stories are like all very positive. They're like, oh, she kept running and that's so cool. And she's so awesome. And I think this is where we get into quitting as an act of bravery. Because the thing is, in a lot of ways, persevering is the easy choice. Like I understand it's physically hard. But from a cognitive standpoint, it's an easy choice because you know that someone's going to write some amazing article about what a badass you are, which is exactly what happened. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, with you, I mean, what's the sort of, what's the hardest thing that you've had to quit in your own life? Well, so I would say, Your bravest moment. So I mean, I kind of have two answers to this. I mean, poker was really hard for me to quit. It was very much part of my identity. You know, I mean, it's particularly hard when it's not just like your career but like you're on television. Like it's your brand. It so becomes who you are that when you walk away, you know, and I was walking away because I, you know, I really wanted to write these books. And there's all that like, well, what if the books flop? Like what if nobody reads them? What if somebody doesn't want to read a book on cognitive psychology from somebody that they think is a poker player, even though I'm a cognitive, but people don't know me as that, right? And when I walked away, I really didn't ever play again. So, so I think that that that was really hard. And I probably should have done it earlier because I was unhappy for quite a long time. And I think that that was really hard. So I would say maybe that was the hardest thing I had to quit, but where my mind actually goes is in a different direction, which is so I quit graduate school five years in what we call ABD, meaning my dissertation was done. I just hadn't like defended it. And the reason that I quit was because I got sick. I ended up in the hospital for a couple of weeks. So this is, you know, sort of forced quitting. And during when I was, when I was sick, I then needed to take a year off. So I was going out for all my job talks and I had to cancel them. And so now during that year, I just needed money. And that's when I started playing poker. So I started playing poker, loved it, obviously kept doing it for 18 years. And, you know, at that time, this was before like we had cell phones and texting people. And it was harder to keep in touch with people. And I kind of lost touch with my mentors from graduate school. And I carried around with me for 18 years, a tremendous amount of shame over quitting there, mainly because I just felt like I had let them down. So, you know, mentors put a lot of time into you in graduate school. And I felt all of those things that are those negative emotions about quitting, you know, even though I had found something that I was really good at that I really enjoyed, I felt like, you know, I'd let these people down that they were probably very ashamed of me. And I really like, I mean, this was something, I mean, this was something I thought about a lot. So completely accidentally in 2012, this was after I had left poker, I ran into Lila Gleitman who was my advisor at Penn in a doctor's office. And there she was. And I got up the nerve and I went over and said hello. And she was in her early eighties at this point. And her face just lit up. I mean, it was it was really quite something. And from that moment on, we saw each other every single week because we lived in the same area at that point. We saw each other every single week. And I got a whole decade of total and utter joy with her before she passed in her early nineties. And I think that what's so important about this is again, sort of same thing that happened with Sarah Olston Martinez. When she left, remember, I said she thought that everybody's going to be very disappointed in her. And when I asked her about it, she said, no, actually, they all were very happy that I was leaving. They understood. And in some ways, they felt they had failed me, that they hadn't helped me to achieve better work-life balance that would have allowed me to be happier in my job. And I had a very direct conversation with Lyla about the shame that I had felt over leaving. And she was just like, what? No. Like, we were so proud of you. We were sad that we lost touch. But our job as mentors isn't for you to do what we do. It's for you to go find something that you find joy and happiness in. And she just made it very clear that she had never felt anything but love for me through all of that. So I think this is something that's really important to realize when you're with these quitting decisions, is that the stories that we tell in our heads are very different than how people do actually view us and think about these choices that we make. And obviously, there are some mentors who would be mad. There are leaders who get pissed off if you shut a project down. But they're not very good ones. And the thing is the good ones are going to love you through all of it. And that's the thing that you have to remember. Well, I'd imagine any mentor you have would be very proud of you. I think you've done remarkable things. And your books are amazing. And your new one is absolutely marvelous as well. And I think you're going to help many thousands of people understand how to live their lives a little bit better. So thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you for being you and being so marvelous. There were two things I was going to end on. One was I loved this marvelous quote that you said from Danny Kahneman. He said he liked quoting Nobel laureates. And I thought it was lovely advice. He said, what every you said to Danny, I think what would you suggest people need if they want to be able to better understand or make a better decision when it comes to quitting? And he said, what everybody needs is the friend who really loves them but does not care much about their hurt feelings in the moment. Which I thought was so lovely. And what a marvelous piece of advice. And I think you've sort of alluded to that a lot in this chat that we've had. So you obviously listen to the wise man as well. I try, I try. Such a wonderful book. And you, again, just for people who haven't read this yet, the everything in the book is referenced. I mean, there's sort of almost a sixth or something of the book is taken up with references. It's really, really, really what you said. Yeah, we don't, yeah. It's, you know, this, there, this is the thing that I, that's incredibly important to me as a writer is that what I'm saying is evidence-based. I mean, my training is in cognitive science, obviously. And if it isn't a study that's been replicated where you can believe in the results of the study, I don't want to say it. So whatever I'm saying, you know, there's a lot of like Richard Taylor's work, Colin Cameron's work, Barry Stas, another person who's really done work in this topic of escalation of commitment, the way that we really, really double down on, on losing causes. Obviously, Danny Kahneman, Jack Netsch, so on and so forth. So if people are really interested in the science of quitting and what really gets in our way in terms of the deep work on cognitive bias that's been done, that, that is, you can definitely get that out of this book. Okay, marvelous. And then two very fun random questions just to finish the podcast. Would you rather say, would you rather have the ability to send, to see 10 minutes into the future or 150 years into the future? That's an interesting question. 10 minutes into the future would be more useful for me personally. No more surprises though. Yeah, no, I know. But I think that, I think that that is true, that there wouldn't be surprises. But I'm actually super obsessed with like the long view. So for me personally, just for my own curiosity, I would take the 150 years. Okay, all right. And then the other one I kind of made up on the spot, it would be something like, would you rather have to quit everything that you start after a year or see everything through that you continue to do after a year? Well, you know, the problem with this, the thing is that I would totally say yes, except for the problem of my husband. Well, you could, because I was trying to think about it as, if you see something three for over a year, then you probably want to stay with it. Like with any year, that's a good time, you would have had that decision. You would have had that. Yeah, but I would be fine, except for my husband and my children. I would be fine with quitting, literally. I would be fine with quitting everything after a year. I really would. I love exploring apart from family. Apart from family. I would take quitting because the thing about it is that that gives you an opportunity to explore new things and then you explore these new things and you actually really like them, right? And also we'd have to talk about the level. Like I'm not going to quit exercise, but like maybe I'm quitting yoga after a year and going and finding something else to do. I actually think that that would be super fun. Yeah. So I would totally take that, as long as it's not like family. Yeah. Okay, well, thank you so, so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. This has been one of my favorite conversations of all time. I hope we get to meet and chat again. And yeah, thank you so, so much. Really, really appreciate it. Well, thank you. I hope so too. Wish you all the very best of your book. And if anyone's listening, best place to go is any bookshop, Amazon, or you can email and get in touch with Annie at her website, which is anniejuic.com. Nailed it. Nailed it. Thanks so, so much. Thank you very much. This was such a nice conversation. Thank you.