0:00

Lincoln presents.

0:11

It's eleven thirty in the morning

0:13

on May tenth nineteen ninety six,

0:16

and Lucas Ski is within striking

0:18

distance of the summit of Mount Everest.

0:21

When he gets to the top, he will capture

0:23

the final prize in a goal he's been chasing.

0:26

for years. He'll be able to say

0:28

that he's climbed the highest mountain on

0:30

every continent, but

0:33

there's a problem. Right now, Lou

0:35

isn't moving. He's stuck above

0:37

twenty eight thousand feet behind group of climbers

0:39

who are making excruciatingly slow

0:42

progress. There's a saying

0:44

in mountain climbing, speed is

0:46

safety. Stay still for too

0:48

long and you're dead. Literally.

0:51

blue

0:51

is in what's known as the death zone,

0:53

an altitude where the air is too thin

0:55

for anyone to stay alive for an extended

0:57

period. Supplemental oxygen can

1:00

buy you time, but still you've

1:02

got to move fast, a lot faster

1:04

than Lou is moving right now. and

1:06

time is running out.

1:10

When Lou

1:12

left camp thirteen hours ago,

1:14

His expedition leader, a season mountaineer

1:17

named Rob Hall, told him that today's

1:19

turnaround time is one PM.

1:21

That means no matter

1:23

where he is on the mountain, when the clock

1:25

strikes one, he has to head back

1:27

down. Now as he inches

1:29

his way forward, Lou starts

1:32

doing the math in his oxygen deprived

1:34

brain. I

1:35

looked at my watch and I had a sick feeling

1:37

inside of myself. This is why I was

1:39

feeling sick at that point. because

1:42

I knew I knew

1:44

it was impossible to get there by the

1:46

one PM tour. Okay?

1:48

And yet, The summit is

1:50

so close. If he gives

1:52

up, he thinks to himself, he'll regret

1:55

it for the rest of his life.

1:57

so he takes another step forward.

2:00

My

2:00

heart was beating so hard.

2:03

I felt like it was gonna jump

2:05

right out of my chest. I'm almost

2:08

shaking as I

2:11

was struggling inside of myself

2:13

with What am I gonna do?

2:15

Am I gonna keep going because I'm so

2:17

close or am I gonna turn around?

2:19

Lou isn't the only climber wrestling with

2:21

that decision. The same thoughts are

2:23

running to the head of John Taseke, and

2:25

I thought if I keep going now, I'll be out of oxygen,

2:29

get to the summit, but I'll be coming back

2:31

down to the south coal in the dark and without

2:33

oxygen and more tar than I am now.

2:35

The risks were escalating.

2:37

But like Liu, John's no quitter.

2:40

he spent years training for this

2:42

day. And for what? To

2:44

give up with less than seven hundred vertical

2:46

feet left to climb, but

2:48

when he sees the expedition leader Rob

2:50

Hall heading toward him, John

2:52

makes up his mind. I

2:54

said to him, I'm

2:55

going down.

2:56

and I could even see behind his

2:59

oxygen mask. He was visibly disappointed probably

3:01

for me because he loved to get people

3:03

to achieve their goal of getting to the top. But

3:06

he said, mutual cool pal. I'll

3:08

see you back at the satcom, and

3:11

that was the last time I

3:13

saw a real life.

3:16

Rob ignored his own turnaround time and

3:18

pushed on to the summit arriving just

3:20

after two PM. He then waited

3:22

a full hour for another climber to

3:24

arrive. They tried to descend

3:27

but ran out of oxygen. The guy

3:29

Rob was climbing with collapsed. Rob

3:31

couldn't get him down, but he wouldn't leave him

3:33

either. They both died.

3:36

Meanwhile, John and Lou, they abandoned

3:39

their quest for the summit and lived.

3:45

I'm Rufus Griskam, and this is

3:47

the next big idea today

3:49

how to quit when you're ahead.

3:55

When we tell stories of adversity,

3:57

We tend to focus on those who go

3:59

for broke.

4:01

The climbers who continued up the mountain,

4:03

who ignored the turnaround time, who persevered,

4:06

and then met a tragic fate,

4:08

There, the heroes of John Crack hours

4:10

were down bestseller into thin

4:12

air. And

4:13

John and Lou, the climbers who followed

4:15

the rules, who turned around and

4:17

lived?

4:18

They demonstrated

4:19

so clearly why quitting

4:21

is a really good thing to do sometimes.

4:23

But yet, we don't even notice

4:26

them because it's, you know, meth.

4:28

It's

4:29

not it's not interesting to us. It's

4:31

not really the stuff movies are made of.

4:34

That's behavioral scientist, Annie

4:36

Duke. In

4:37

her new book, Quit, she asks,

4:40

why don't we celebrate Quitters?

4:42

Why do we live in a world where making the right

4:44

decision? The decision to walk away

4:46

isn't celebrated as an act of heroism.

4:49

but dismissed as a sign of failure. The

4:51

problem Annie says isn't purely

4:54

cultural, it's psychological, We

4:56

are cognitively biased to wanna

4:58

gut things out, whether it's a bad relationship,

5:00

a crappy job, or a bid for

5:02

the summit of Mount Everest. But

5:05

here's the thing. In the long

5:07

run, making smart decisions about when

5:09

to quit is what separates those

5:11

who succeed. from those who don't.

5:13

Annie

5:13

hasn't just studied the power of quitting as a

5:16

scientist. She's seen it up close.

5:18

For eighteen years, she was a professional poker

5:20

player and it turns out that the single

5:22

biggest difference between pros and amateurs

5:25

is how often they fold.

5:27

We're gonna talk about her poker days in this

5:29

episode We'll also discuss what

5:31

most people get wrong about

5:33

grit. The problem with equating perseverance

5:35

and success and how quitting can

5:37

make your life, your career, and your relationships

5:40

better.

5:41

Annie is brilliant, funny,

5:43

a great storyteller. I think you'll

5:45

come away from this conversation as I

5:47

did with a whole new appreciation

5:49

for the power of quitting.

6:00

You are listening to the LinkedIn podcast

6:02

network sponsored by Slack. Slack

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at slack dot com slash DHQ

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Slack, where the future works.

6:31

Andy, Duke, Thank you for being

6:34

with us today on the next big idea

6:36

podcast.

6:37

Well, thank you for having me. I hope I can

6:39

live up to the introduction.

6:40

No small,

6:43

no small challenge.

6:45

Any I I was speaking some

6:47

months ago with a a leading literary

6:50

agent who represents many

6:52

famous authors who've written these wonderful

6:54

books about the intersection of science and how we

6:56

can be better at our lives. And

6:58

she said to me, when you get to

7:00

know these authors, you realize that most of

7:02

them are solving problems in

7:04

writing their books. They're solving problems in their

7:06

own lives. Daniel Pick

7:08

has has put this another way. He says research

7:10

is research. So you

7:12

have this wonderful new book out, quit

7:14

the power of knowing when to walk away

7:17

What is your personal relationship with

7:20

quitting? And do you think you've

7:22

made good decisions in your life about when

7:24

to walk away? Oh, gosh. You

7:26

know, that's such an interesting

7:27

question. I hadn't really pondered that.

7:29

But, like, if someone told me, oh, you

7:31

wrote the book because you've actually quit a lot

7:33

of things in your life and

7:34

you were trying to make yourself feel better

7:36

about it, I would be like, well, maybe

7:38

that's true. I've quit a lot of stuff

7:40

in my life. I've bounced around. from

7:42

one thing to the other a lot. And,

7:44

you know, one of the things I talk about in the

7:47

book is that we

7:48

have this very

7:50

like, we just have a very negative view of

7:52

quitting. You know,

7:53

we're like, quiters never win, winners never

7:55

quit. So now you've got me

7:57

thinking, like,

7:59

I

7:59

mean, I'm susceptible to that negative

8:02

view of quitting also because I'm a human

8:04

being. And I have

8:06

spent a lot of my life in some

8:08

sort of, like, you know,

8:09

self flagellation or something aberrating

8:12

myself thinking,

8:13

like, oh, like, I'm

8:15

so compitious, you

8:17

know, I'm unfocused. I

8:20

I really like shiny objects and I gravitate

8:22

toward them.

8:23

I do have this narrative that goes, you know,

8:25

sort of where

8:26

I'm thinking myself about, like, all the quitting

8:29

I've done in

8:30

my life is a bad thing.

8:31

So Now,

8:33

like, now I'm questioning myself. I'm having

8:36

an existential crisis

8:36

over here. And maybe

8:39

that's actually why I wrote the book was to

8:41

sort of explore quitting in

8:43

order to think about that narrative that I

8:45

say to myself. I mean, if you

8:47

want, I'm happy to tell you the reason why

8:49

I thought Interesting. Yeah.

8:51

Yeah. Yeah. So why did you why before this

8:53

moment, why did you think you wrote the book?

8:55

Well,

8:56

before this moment, what I thought I wrote the book

8:58

was that you know, as a poker player, you

9:00

really learn that quitting is incredibly

9:02

important. You think about it a lot. Right? Like, when do

9:04

you fold? And how do it become better

9:06

at folding than other people? I

9:08

know that sounds sort of counterintuitive, but

9:10

that's actually the thing that distinguishes great

9:13

poker players from. Yeah. Sure.

9:15

more more than anything else is their ability

9:17

to fold situations where other people

9:19

can't. So that was only something that I

9:21

was kind of thinking about is this idea of

9:23

cutting your losses. It's

9:25

just a really important concept in

9:27

Poker. And the narrative

9:30

around grit, I think, is so powerful.

9:32

in

9:32

a way that, by the way, Angela Duckworth

9:35

wouldn't endorse, you know? because if you

9:37

read Angela Duckworth's book,

9:39

Grit, which so obviously popular

9:41

and a great book. I recommend people read

9:43

it. What she's saying

9:45

is, you shouldn't

9:45

quit things just because they're hard because there's

9:48

lots of hard things that are worth a while. What

9:50

you

9:50

need to do is actually explore a

9:52

bunch of stuff to find the thing that you're passionate

9:54

about and then have the ability to stick with

9:56

that even when it's

9:58

hard. Notice

9:59

that there's a

9:59

lot of nuance in what I just said because she's

10:02

not telling you just stick to things.

10:04

Yeah. You know, stick to it and you're gonna exceed. She's

10:06

not telling you to stick to things that aren't

10:08

worthwhile. She's saying, you have to be able to withstand the

10:10

hard times. You know, in

10:11

order to eventually be successful at things that

10:14

aren't worthwhile. But I don't think that that's

10:16

the way that people see

10:18

it, you know, sort

10:18

of in the popular mind.

10:20

Right? When they see that, what they think is grid

10:23

is good. If

10:24

I'm gritty, I'm going to succeed.

10:27

And and if I'm a quitter, it's bad

10:29

because grit is a virtue. It's

10:31

a thing

10:31

that adds character.

10:33

It builds character even.

10:36

And that

10:36

it's a signal of success. It's

10:38

a signal that I'm tough. it's a signal

10:40

that I'm reliable, all of these things. Mhmm.

10:42

So I was

10:43

honestly a little frustrated with

10:46

what

10:47

I think the reading of grit. Like,

10:49

the way that that's been distorted

10:51

because, you know, as a poker player, I know that

10:53

you

10:53

just you shouldn't stick to things. because the

10:56

thing about grit that

10:58

people need to realize

11:00

is two things. One is

11:02

grit does get you to stick to hard things

11:04

that are a while, but it also gets you to stick

11:06

to hard things that aren't worthwhile. And

11:08

that's a big problem because

11:10

you shouldn't spend your time on things that

11:12

aren't worthwhile. It sacrifices your

11:14

ability to spend time on things

11:16

that are. So that's the first thing for people to

11:18

understand. And then the second thing that people

11:20

willing in to understand is that the decision

11:22

about whether to persevere or

11:24

grid it out, and the decision about

11:26

whether to quit are the exact same

11:28

decision.

11:29

Right. If I if I choose to persevere, I'm choosing

11:31

not

11:31

to quit. If I choose to quit, I'm choosing not to

11:34

persevere. And so it's not so

11:36

much like one as good as one as bad.

11:38

it's when should you

11:41

stick to things and when should you quit

11:43

them.

11:43

And I just felt like that was a message

11:46

that needed to get out there. I felt

11:48

like people needed to hear the other side of

11:50

the conversation because I think

11:51

that when you hear both sides

11:54

of the conversation, it just makes the

11:56

conversation better. Yep.

11:58

Yep. Yeah. But I now

11:59

I'm thinking it was

11:59

just an existential crisis. So I

12:02

just I just don't know why I wanted to

12:04

write it. Right. I'm pretty sure it's just an

12:06

existential crisis now. Well,

12:07

you know, it it could be both. I mean,

12:10

it's I've, you know, as an early reader

12:12

of your book, I'm I'm completely

12:14

convinced by the argument that we as a culture

12:16

have a sort of distorted lens where we

12:19

just, you know, we

12:20

revere perseverance to a

12:23

degree that's bananas. I mean,

12:25

to a degree that we we that when people persevere to the

12:27

point that they kill themselves, that they die in the

12:29

process of persevereing, we think of them as

12:31

heroes. And when people like how that was

12:33

how was it? Right.

12:35

It it it really is a blind

12:37

spot. You've you've convinced at

12:39

least one reader that there's that

12:41

we have collective blind spot. But I also think

12:43

your own story is interesting because to some

12:45

degree, I mean, you've had this, you know, wildly

12:47

successful career as a

12:48

top poker player winning millions of

12:51

dollars. And now as a top

12:53

writer, you started off as an academic

12:55

on a path to great success

12:58

in academia. And it was

13:00

somewhat random chance that knocked you off

13:02

that path and knocked you into

13:04

a career as a professional poker

13:06

player. Right? So So so you kind

13:08

of somewhat accidentally stumbled

13:10

into this realization that that

13:12

wow,

13:12

the quitting of your

13:15

academic path, which was somewhat involuntary,

13:17

ended

13:18

up having a wonderful upside for you.

13:20

though you

13:21

know, a lot of times that we quit, we do it voluntarily.

13:24

Right?

13:24

But but there's lots of times when we're forced

13:26

to quit when we get fired from

13:28

our job or we're in

13:30

a relationship and our partner chooses to

13:32

end it even though we would wanna continue.

13:34

You know, you get an injury

13:36

the you know, you had an

13:39

amazing career in the NFL and then you

13:41

have a career ending injury and you're forced to

13:43

quit. And for me, I

13:45

had a similar situation where I was

13:47

forced to quit or at least

13:48

take a leave where

13:49

I I done five years of work at the University

13:52

of Pennsylvania, and I

13:53

was getting my phd

13:55

in cognitive science. And five

13:57

years, you know, I was already I was at the

13:59

end of the

13:59

road there. Like, I had already done the

14:02

work for my dissertation and I

14:04

was going out on job talks

14:05

actually because I fully intended to become an

14:07

academic. But I was struggling

14:09

with an illness at the time, a stomach

14:11

illness that had

14:13

been chronic. It was it had been

14:15

bad for many months. But I was

14:17

trying to sort of power through the whole thing to

14:19

get through my job talks because I

14:21

was trying to get a tenure track position.

14:24

And the illness became acute,

14:26

and I actually ended up in the hospital for two weeks.

14:28

So it happened to be right during the time that I was

14:30

supposed to go out from my job tax So I

14:32

need to take time off, which

14:34

I did, but it

14:35

wasn't my choice.

14:36

Like, I had to. So

14:38

I took time off and then I needed

14:40

to do something I just had constraints

14:42

on what I could do to make money because

14:44

I needed

14:44

money. I couldn't start a new career

14:47

because I was planning to go back to academics,

14:49

so I didn't wanna do something which was like

14:51

a new career, I couldn't do something

14:53

that was nine to five because I I didn't really

14:55

know from day to day

14:56

whether I was gonna feel okay. And

14:59

I didn't really wanna do something where

15:01

I was like taking a job, which I was then gonna

15:03

have to like quit when I went back to

15:05

academics. So I just sort of felt like I

15:07

had constraints and, you know, and talking

15:09

to my brother, he's the one who

15:11

actually suggested that I play poker. He's

15:13

a kind of fit all of my needs.

15:16

Right? Like, I could play when I wanted to.

15:18

I didn't have a boss. And

15:20

I could leave at any time with no harm to

15:22

anybody else. and just go back to

15:24

academics. And that's how I actually ended

15:26

up playing poker

15:27

with. It was something I was gonna do in the meantime while I

15:29

was

15:29

recovering. And obviously, the meantime

15:31

turned into a long time, actually, about eighteen

15:34

years. But, you know, I point out

15:36

that I I think that

15:38

The thing

15:39

that I learned from that was that

15:41

quitting's okay. And

15:43

it shouldn't take you being forced

15:46

into the choice to do it. for you

15:47

to consider doing it more.

15:50

Because

15:50

the thing that we don't really realize

15:52

is that when we're doing things, we're

15:54

not flooring, all the other opportunities that are

15:57

available to us. You

15:58

know, that moment where I

15:59

had to quit actually caused me

16:02

to explore

16:03

poker as an option. And

16:05

I turned

16:05

out that for a long time, that was the main

16:08

thing that I did. And I think

16:10

that I actually learned that

16:12

lesson pretty well and kept

16:14

going. And interestingly enough, if it would go back to

16:16

my existential crisis, like, because we're just gonna

16:18

make this a therapy session

16:19

now. Oh, good. I

16:20

spent a good

16:22

part of my life really beating myself

16:24

up for that. Right. Like, that

16:26

I didn't stick with academics. you know that I

16:28

had let down my advisors. Right?

16:31

These are all the things that we tell ourselves under these

16:33

circumstances. That my advisors have put so much

16:35

time and effort into me, and now I

16:37

was letting them down.

16:38

And I felt like I I was a

16:41

failure that

16:41

I had left academics. But

16:44

first of all, what you know,

16:47

number

16:47

one, when I reconnected

16:49

with my adviser, it turned out

16:51

she was just really happy for me. And

16:53

she

16:53

sort of articulated that, like, you didn't

16:56

waste anything. Like, we just wanted you to go and

16:58

be happy. And I

17:00

think that was an Horton thing that I learned. And

17:02

then the second thing was that I'm back in

17:04

academics now. I'm at

17:05

the University of Pennsylvania. I

17:07

teach exec at It Wharton. I work

17:09

with Phil Tottlaukin Barb Miller's in their

17:11

lab. I work with Marie Schweitzer in

17:14

his lab, and I'm doing research. And, you

17:16

know, that's a thing that we also forget is that the

17:18

things that you quit, you can also you you

17:20

can often come back to. And the way

17:22

that we think that other people are viewing are

17:25

quitting is usually not at all

17:27

what's true. So,

17:28

you know, I think that that's also been helpful for

17:30

my ability to sort of, like, move around a

17:32

little bit, but I think there's just really important lessons

17:34

in there. Like, don't wait to be forced

17:37

to quit. in order to learn all these lessons. Like, think about

17:39

them before you have

17:41

to. Howard Bauchner: And I

17:42

think that may be even more true today than

17:44

it was decades ago. that we

17:46

can have, like, when I'm talking to my kids, I have more of this view

17:48

that, like, the question isn't what

17:51

career will you have? It's it's what career is

17:53

plural. Will you have? Yes.

17:55

And in and in what sequence do you want to have them? Right? I

17:57

mean, like, we live at a time where you can do a lot

17:59

of different

17:59

things. And and actually, that

18:02

you know, the cross pollination can

18:04

be really empowering. And and and this happened for

18:06

you in the sense that as it turns out, Poker

18:08

is this perfect laboratory

18:10

for social science and studying human behavior,

18:13

you could see it almost as

18:15

a lucrative, was it eighteen years or

18:17

something of field science of

18:20

of social science. Right?

18:22

Well, 0II

18:22

mean, it absolutely informs the way

18:24

that I think about these things. I think

18:27

experience that I think a lot of cognitive scientists

18:29

don't, which is in

18:31

this

18:31

environment that poker is, which

18:34

is really high stakes, fast paced decision making

18:36

under uncertainty. Mhmm. You know,

18:37

it's when we're under these conditions of

18:40

extreme uncertainty that cognitive bias

18:42

gets amplified. So,

18:43

you know, I talked in the book about Sun cause

18:45

bias, which goes along with this idea of

18:48

waste,

18:48

where we make this

18:50

mistake when we're thinking about quitting.

18:53

that we

18:53

take into account the resources that we've

18:55

already spent in deciding

18:56

whether to continue,

18:59

whether to grid it out, whether

19:00

to spend more. and that's

19:02

a mistake because what you should care about is it worthwhile

19:04

to continue going forward. So like a simple

19:07

example of that would be if

19:09

you own a stock and

19:11

you've lost money in it, you're

19:13

much more likely to hold on to it

19:15

than if

19:15

you approach that stock fresh.

19:17

and thought

19:18

about whether it was worthwhile to keep to

19:20

to buy it on that day. Mhmm. Exactly.

19:22

Yep. So, you know, the way to think about

19:24

it is if you wouldn't buy it today, you shouldn't

19:26

hold it today. Exactly.

19:29

But instead, what happens and you hear people say

19:31

this all the time is I can't sell it because I need to

19:33

get my money back. So that's

19:35

like a perfect example of

19:37

some cost because

19:38

it's like, well, you can't get those dollars back.

19:40

You already spent them. The question is,

19:42

what can you do going forward? Where should your next

19:45

dollar go? Should it stay in the stock or

19:47

should it move? And if you would not

19:48

buy the stock today, then you should sell it and move

19:51

the money to a stock that you would

19:53

buy, but we don't do that. And it's not

19:55

just about, like,

19:56

stock. It's, like,

19:58

people are in a

19:59

bad relationship and you say, why don't

20:02

you leave? And like I put so much time into it

20:04

already or, you know, they're

20:06

staying in a job that's clearly making

20:08

them unhappy and you say, why? Well, you

20:10

know, then I'll have wasted all of my

20:12

time here. you

20:12

know, what about all my training for this

20:15

job? And it's like, which are miserable.

20:17

If you knew this was the situation we're gonna be

20:19

in, you wouldn't take the job

20:20

today. So you

20:22

know, that's the sub fallacy. So we really understand the

20:24

sub cost fallacy from like a scientific

20:27

standpoint. But when you're sitting in a poker table,

20:29

you get a different view on it.

20:31

because you literally hear

20:33

a player say I had too much

20:35

in the pot to fold. Mhmm.

20:36

And it's like,

20:38

Buddy,

20:38

that money's already in the pot. You have

20:41

to protect the money that's in your

20:43

stack. Yep. Exactly. Is the

20:45

next chip you put in? Better

20:47

be money good. But

20:48

we all fall for this thing, this

20:50

this sunk cost fallacy. So

20:52

a this is just sort of the situation that

20:54

we're in. And when you're at a poker table,

20:56

you just

20:57

see it so clearly

20:59

because they basically say the

21:02

biases out loud. every

21:04

single session that you play.

21:06

So I think it just, like, gave me a

21:08

different view on it. Right? Where I

21:10

could feel it so deeply because I saw

21:12

it every day. so deeply in these

21:14

high stakes situations with people who

21:16

knew better. Howard Bauchner: And and

21:18

as you point out in the book, professionals

21:21

Professional poker players fold seventy five to eighty five

21:23

percent of the time, amateurs fold

21:25

less than half the time. Right.

21:28

So there's a there's a really clear distinction. And and this and you see

21:30

this this also, this difference

21:33

in how we think about failure and

21:37

quitting at the highest levels of

21:39

entrepreneurship, you know, venture capital

21:41

investors. And and I love your

21:43

comment. We we had a great conversation with

21:45

Maria Kanakova who who had already convinced

21:47

us that life is not chess,

21:49

it's poker. Right? This is We

21:52

live in this world with incomplete

21:55

information. We have to

21:56

make bets with with incomplete information.

21:58

We're we're sort of at the

21:59

mercy of powers that are out of

22:02

our control. But over

22:04

time, all the good luck and bad luck

22:06

balances out -- Right. -- if if

22:08

we're disciplined about our

22:10

decision making, That

22:11

that's exactly right. And,

22:13

you know, the the problem

22:15

is that, you know, I mean, I

22:17

use this phrase throughout the book

22:20

Our

22:20

decisions are the worst one we're in it.

22:22

And what does

22:23

that mean? This is something from Daniel condiment. This

22:25

is the way that he talks about it.

22:27

is when you're facing down the decision, that's

22:30

when you're gonna be your most irrational because all

22:32

of what you just talked

22:33

about that short termism

22:35

is is gonna

22:36

be at its

22:37

height. Right? It's gonna be at

22:39

its worse. Right? I don't wanna feel bad

22:42

now. I don't

22:42

wanna waste my money now. I don't wanna

22:44

feel like I failed now. One of the things that I say

22:46

in the book that you know, where I I say, like, one

22:49

of the things that causes it to be really

22:51

hard to quit is that's

22:53

the

22:54

moment where you go from failing

22:57

to

22:57

having failed. So

22:59

notice when you're failing, there's still a chance you

23:01

could succeed. Mhmm. But

23:03

once you quit,

23:04

that's done.

23:06

Right? You have to take the loss. Or as Richard Taylor

23:08

would say, you have to now close the account

23:10

in the losses. And

23:12

that's a thing we don't like to do. And so

23:15

instead of thinking about how

23:17

do I

23:17

reach my long term goals, how do I

23:20

make sure in the long run that I'm getting the

23:22

best results possible, which

23:23

is clearly gonna involve

23:26

quitting the bad stuff. I wanna quit the bad stuff and

23:28

stick to the good stuff. Instead,

23:30

we get caught up in

23:31

the moment in this totally short term thinking of I

23:33

just don't want to go from that moment of

23:36

failing to having failed. Let's

23:38

take a

23:38

quick break. When we

23:41

come back, Andy's gonna tell us how an

23:43

entrepreneur named Stuart Butterfield

23:45

made a decision to quit that shocked

23:47

his colleagues, alarmed his

23:49

investors, and turned him into a

23:52

billionaire.

23:57

We

23:59

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23:59

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24:32

It's

24:39

so extraordinary that

24:42

we make heroes even out of

24:44

people who take perseverance to

24:46

a degree that's almost suicidal.

24:48

You know, but of course, on the other

24:50

hand, stories of persevere incidents sick in our heads are

24:52

all these sort of heroic tales

24:54

of like, you know, doctor Seuss's first book

24:56

was rejected twenty seven times.

24:58

It was that Twenty eight times, you submitted it, but it was

25:00

accepted, or, like, you know, sir James

25:03

Dyson spent fifteen

25:05

years he created over five

25:07

thousand failed vacuum prototypes.

25:09

types. Right? It was the five thousand one hundred and

25:11

twenty seventh prototype that became the

25:13

first bag with vacuum cleaner and

25:15

turned Dyson into a billionaire. Right?

25:17

And, of course, Edison has

25:20

a lot of the most famous quotes about

25:22

perseverance. And so we hear these

25:24

stories and what we take from it is

25:26

I need to be grittier What do you say

25:28

to that to that response? So let

25:30

me let me

25:30

start just at the basic level. What you just

25:32

told me a story that told me that Dyson quit

25:34

a lot. True.

25:36

because

25:37

he didn't stick with he made

25:39

a prototype and didn't he didn't stick with it.

25:41

He tried a different way to do it.

25:43

Right? So, like, we we need to understand, like,

25:45

a lot of you know, you have to think about

25:47

quitting in different ways, and some of it is,

25:50

like, you

25:50

know, a lot of the great success stories and startups

25:52

are are huge. Like, you know, they've started

25:54

off as one thing or developing one kind

25:56

of product, and they totally rejected it and went

25:58

and developed another one, and

25:59

that's what ended up working.

26:01

So let's not get on

26:03

the the overall level of just, like, stick

26:05

to everything and you'll succeed. Like, yeah, just stick to

26:07

the right things and you think about what are the

26:10

ways to acute on the goal. Maybe the goal is

26:12

to make a great vacuum cleaner because you hate your

26:14

vacuum cleaner, but there's different ways that you

26:16

can attack that problem. you know, you

26:18

wanna stick with your company and you

26:20

have a particular product, but that doesn't work

26:22

so you switch to a different product. Those

26:24

are all actually examples of quitting. So

26:26

let's just be really clear -- Mhmm. -- that whenever we

26:29

stop doing something to do something else, it's

26:31

quitting. But the other thing that I

26:33

think is so important just kind of

26:35

on a more

26:36

macro level is

26:39

just because someone

26:39

has succeeded at something by

26:42

persevereing, it doesn't mean that if you

26:44

persevere, you'll see. We we need to not

26:46

--

26:46

Exactly. -- make it

26:47

we need to not go in both directions. So

26:50

anybody who's ever been successful at something

26:52

has stuck to it.

26:54

But that doesn't mean if you stick

26:56

to something that you'll

26:57

succeed. So,

26:59

you know, and I think that that's the thing that

27:01

we need to remember So there's

27:03

something called, you know, survivorship bias. And what

27:05

you're describing to me is survivorship bias. Yes.

27:08

And the thing is that it's true,

27:10

like, you you may be doing something that

27:12

has a very small probability of

27:14

succeeding, and a bunch of people are doing it, and

27:16

then you find the one person who

27:18

succeeds. And

27:18

then you look at that and say, oh, well, then I

27:21

should, you know, keep going at

27:23

everything. And the

27:24

answer to that is no. it's an

27:26

expected value problem. So what do I mean

27:28

by that? You have to think about what is it that

27:30

I'm trying to achieve? What are my

27:32

goals? What are my values?

27:35

make

27:35

some estimate of the

27:37

chances that you'll actually be able to

27:39

succeed given the cost that you'll have to bear

27:41

and then decide

27:42

whether that's worth it.

27:44

So I'm

27:44

sure that that that's what Dyson was doing.

27:46

It's like, he was really

27:47

passionate about it, and he

27:50

was gonna keep going. And I'm guessing that

27:52

even if he failed, he was

27:54

fine with that. But he really wanted

27:56

you know, that he had a passion for making

27:58

vacuum cleaners. So maybe that made him

28:01

really happy. and what he

28:02

was sacrificing by spending

28:04

the

28:04

time on that or the resources on

28:07

that and not being able to spend time

28:09

and resources on other opportunities

28:11

was fine

28:11

for him. I mean, I assume he wasn't

28:14

starving and he wasn't negatively

28:16

impacting his family and other things

28:18

that he valued, and I don't know what his value equation

28:20

was, but it's a question

28:22

of is it worthwhile enough for

28:24

me to keep going? And

28:26

success stories, retroactively select

28:28

for stories of persistence. Right? I mean,

28:30

there are undoubtedly many Dyson types

28:34

you know, who who attempts something five thousand times

28:36

and it thought, you know, it doesn't necessarily work.

28:38

But it's it's, you know, so it's actually

28:40

the perseverance is necessary but

28:43

not sufficient. and figuring out how to be

28:45

persevere and about the right things.

28:47

Right? Is the

28:49

critical distinction and just sort of, I

28:51

mean, categorically, reviewing perseverance

28:53

of all all the time is not

28:55

a smart strategy. I was

28:57

really moved by this example of Stewart

29:00

Butterfield. He was

29:00

building this game called glitch, a

29:03

world building game that he

29:05

described as doctor Seuss meets Mani

29:07

Python meets Borghe's, which

29:10

Yeah. Yeah. I I gave you couldn't win. Right?

29:12

And and but the decision he

29:14

had all these sort of data points that

29:16

it was the time to shut down the

29:19

business but it was still an incredibly

29:21

hard decision. He still had, I

29:23

think, six million in cash in the bank. And

29:25

most people around him did not see that it was

29:27

that it was time to to pull stakes.

29:29

But this is exactly the decision most people don't

29:32

make. Right? It's a hard it's a really hard

29:34

decision to make. Yeah. So

29:35

so I think Stuart Butterfield is like a total

29:37

hero. So Stewart Butterfield actually was trying to

29:40

make a multiplayer

29:41

massive online cooperative world

29:45

building called

29:45

Game Never Ending. He

29:47

loved the idea of, like, how the Internet

29:50

created, like, cooperation, and he was

29:52

really passionate about this. So

29:54

he launches the game and

29:57

critics

29:57

like love it. And

29:59

then

30:00

venture capitalists love it. He gets like

30:03

Andreessen Horowitz and invested

30:05

in it, Excel invested in it. Like, these

30:07

are really big names and capital. So he's got

30:09

as you said, lots of money in the bank. Yeah. And

30:11

he watches it. And after a while, he they

30:13

get about five thousand really die

30:16

hard users. So obviously, the diehard

30:18

users are the ones that you can monetize. Right?

30:20

because they're they're now paying

30:22

for the game. And so

30:24

that looks pretty good. But the the

30:26

issue was that somewhere

30:28

around ninety five percent of the people

30:30

who visited the game,

30:31

who actually came to play the game,

30:33

played for, like, seven minutes

30:36

left. and then never

30:36

returned. Okay? So that that's a little bit of a

30:39

problem because you have to obviously get the

30:41

game in front of it. A lot of people to

30:43

try it in order to create these diehard

30:45

users. they all kind of recognize

30:47

the problem that you're

30:49

not converting a super

30:51

high percentage into into these die hard

30:54

users. So they decide to, you know, with the investors

30:56

and and with his co founders, they decide

30:58

to, like, do this

30:59

big marketing push.

31:01

And the marketing push actually turns out

31:03

to be amazing,

31:05

like, growth of new users

31:07

is, like, something like six or seven percent week

31:09

over week during this time period. This is,

31:11

I think, two thousand and

31:13

twelve. And

31:15

they get

31:16

to November the

31:18

last week of the marketing push and that they

31:20

they literally have the best week they've ever

31:23

had. And

31:24

Sunday night of

31:26

that

31:26

weekend, store butterfield

31:29

can't sleep.

31:30

the And

31:32

that morning, he wakes up and he sends

31:34

an email to his cofounders

31:35

and investors.

31:38

And it

31:38

says something to the effect

31:41

of I

31:41

woke up this morning with the dead

31:44

certainty that

31:45

glitch was over.

31:46

Okay. So

31:47

that's weird. Mhmm.

31:49

Okay. Great. Yeah. Right.

31:52

Like cash in the bank, like,

31:54

passionate and engaged users, very

31:56

hard decision to make.

31:57

So, you know,

31:58

obviously, like, the

31:59

investors and the cofounders were like, what's the

32:02

deal? Like, we just had our best week

32:04

ever. Basically, what he said was he realized what

32:06

was bothering him, was that in order

32:08

to actually get to breakeven, you

32:10

would have to

32:11

sustain the growth that

32:13

they had experienced

32:13

over the six week marketing push

32:16

You'd have to sustain it. And even

32:19

then, you would only get to breakeven in thirty

32:21

one weeks. And so

32:22

at that point, he just realized,

32:24

like, I love the game, but not enough

32:26

people are willing to play it a lot. And

32:28

so we should shut it down. Here's how

32:31

he described it to Reid Hoffman. in the

32:33

masters of scale podcast. And you quote this

32:35

in the book, we have a clip. The

32:37

man that is it is so hard

32:39

because the job of a CEO is

32:41

often just to

32:43

come up with a story that enough people

32:46

believe that you can make something happen in the

32:48

world when you have to convince investors

32:50

and you have to press and you have to convince potential employees

32:52

and you have to convince customers. And

32:54

I've done a

32:54

lot of convincing of people. You had a lot of

32:57

convincing of people to come work on this

32:59

project to leave whatever thing they

33:01

weren't working on before, quit their job,

33:03

get paid poorly in exchange for

33:05

equity, in something that just didn't work.

33:09

Let's just stop the story there because

33:11

that's a huge success.

33:13

Here's

33:13

somebody who realized that

33:16

the Despite

33:18

having six million dollars in the bank, despite

33:20

feeling an obligation to his employees,

33:22

despite feeling an

33:23

obligation to his investors or his co

33:26

founders, that he would be wasting their

33:28

time, not just his own,

33:29

but he would be wasting their time

33:32

to continue.

33:33

Because think about it, like, for example, from the employee's

33:35

perspective. Right? They're obviously working

33:37

for, like, basically no money and mostly

33:40

equity. And at the point that he

33:42

determined that their equity wasn't

33:44

worthwhile, that it was

33:44

not gonna, you know, win them a

33:47

whole bunch. he

33:47

realized it wasn't worth their time to be working

33:50

on on glitch anymore, and that he

33:52

ought to free them up so that they could

33:54

go work on something that was gonna be amazing

33:56

and was gonna change world what's gonna be incredible

33:58

where their equity would actually be worth a

34:00

lot. So think about

34:02

that perspective shift. Right? Like, how hard that

34:04

is? because what you hear from people in these

34:06

situations is I'll be letting my employees

34:08

down. Mhmm. Mhmm.

34:08

And what he realized was, no, that's

34:11

the wrong frame. If I keep going with something

34:13

that I am dead certain isn't

34:16

gonna succeed, that's when I'm wasting their time and that's the

34:18

moment that I'm letting them down. Now

34:20

what's interesting here is that

34:22

idea of

34:24

free yourself out to be able to go do something better, I think really

34:26

comes home when we hear the Kona

34:28

to Stuart Butterfield's story, which

34:32

is two

34:32

days later, he had

34:34

launched

34:34

a new product. What is that

34:36

product you

34:37

might ask? Well,

34:40

In

34:40

order to make it easier for employees to

34:42

talk to each other internally, they

34:44

had developed a communication tool

34:48

within glitch.

34:49

which was really like, it kind of combined the

34:52

best pieces of, like, email and

34:54

instant messaging. It allows you to

34:56

attach stuff

34:58

to messages and you could

35:00

record it for, like, company logs and

35:02

that kind of thing. Like, so it's sort of it was like

35:04

this easy way to take all the best

35:06

of, like, texting

35:07

and email. And so at this

35:08

point, he sort of said, I'm gonna

35:11

go look at that and maybe that's

35:12

something that I can develop. Now

35:16

when they used it at glitch, it didn't even have a name. But he said,

35:18

okay. Maybe I'll develop that, but now I have to actually,

35:20

you know, come up with a name for

35:24

it. And the name he came

35:26

up with was searchable log of all company knowledge, which

35:28

is an acronym for

35:30

Slack.

35:32

And that then

35:32

comes out of this. It's a

35:35

it's an amazing

35:35

story. And Slack, of course, as

35:38

we we use it at the next big idea club. We

35:40

love it. recently acquired

35:42

by Salesforce for twenty eight billion

35:44

dollars. That's right. Right?

35:46

So there's there's a huge huge win.

35:48

And what was extraordinary was that all those years of working

35:50

on glitch, they didn't see Slack, the

35:53

the the product they they were using, the

35:55

tool they were using internally as

35:57

a potential opportunity, they were blind to it.

35:59

It wasn't until they made the decision

36:01

to quit that all of a

36:04

sudden, you know, looking around, they said, wait a

36:06

second. Look at this. hiding in

36:08

hindsight.

36:08

I think that drives home the opportunity

36:10

cost problem so much. Right? Which is

36:12

-- Mhmm. -- when we're doing

36:13

something and we're sticking to it,

36:16

we're myopic. Right? Like,

36:17

that's the only thing that we see is the path that

36:19

we're on. And we're not

36:21

actually actively exploring -- Yes.

36:23

-- other paths that we

36:25

might be pursuing that could be better than the thing that

36:27

we're doing. Right? Like, we just stick to

36:29

it no matter what. I mean, this is this

36:31

problem of this idea of, like, grid

36:33

is a virtue. like

36:36

absent any context, just stick to the thing

36:38

you're doing

36:38

-- Mhmm. -- because we lose sight of the other

36:40

things that we could be doing. And and

36:42

I'm not saying that that means you should judge

36:44

jump from thing to thing. Right? Or, like, the next shiny object, which

36:46

was the thing that I always beat

36:48

myself up about. Right? Mhmm. But

36:51

that you should be exploring,

36:53

you should always have these exploratory lines know what you're not

36:55

seeing. And a lot of times

36:57

it takes quitting. to

37:00

be able to go and look. I mean, in the simplest way you can think about it,

37:03

it's like when you have a job, you're

37:05

usually not exploring other jobs.

37:08

It's not until you quit or

37:09

you at least make the decision that you're going to

37:11

quit or that you get fired, that

37:14

you start to explore other all the

37:16

other things

37:18

that you're doing and how many times when

37:20

you do that and you find another

37:22

position? Do people you always hear people say,

37:24

I should have done that six

37:26

months earlier. Of course.

37:28

Yeah. Right? Because then all

37:29

of a sudden, they realized, look at all the opportunities

37:31

I was missing out on. I could

37:33

have created slack, but I was

37:35

spending my time on glitch. Yep. Right.

37:37

And you always hear, but why didn't I do that sooner? Right? Now

37:39

I see that I was missing out on

37:41

all these opportunities. Well, the problem is because

37:43

when you're in it, you're

37:45

not looking for the opportunity. So, of course, you can't see it

37:48

because you become completely

37:50

myopic. Right. Same is true

37:51

in relationships. Right? It's it's the friend

37:53

who's always complaining about the

37:55

boyfriend or girlfriend. And then they finally

37:57

break up and everybody says, yeah, we've been waiting for you

37:59

to do that for for many, many

38:02

months, for years,

38:04

you know. And then why why did you tell me sooner? You

38:06

know? Yeah. So I think that that's

38:07

actually really interesting. So it's two sides of

38:09

the same coin.

38:12

So side one is you feeling like, why didn't I do that

38:15

sooner? Side two is what you

38:17

just said, which is why didn't

38:19

you tell me? Right.

38:21

Okay. So Sure. So this

38:23

is a problem that I talk about, like,

38:25

this difference between being nice and

38:27

being kind. Yeah. Right? And I I think that

38:29

we confuse the two. So I think

38:31

a lot of our, you know, interactions

38:33

with other people are, again, this different you

38:35

know, what's your time horizon. Right?

38:37

Are you trying to make

38:39

someone feel good at the

38:42

moment or

38:42

you were trying to help them in the

38:44

long run. And I think that we don't

38:47

wanna take the pain or make the

38:49

other

38:49

person feel pain -- Mhmm. -- with what we might

38:51

wanna say. So instead we, like, sugar coated

38:53

or we don't actually tell

38:55

them the truth, So they're saying something about their

38:57

their relationship, like, no. Your partner's great.

39:00

Or maybe you don't even talk about it and they just don't

39:02

point out

39:04

that you shouldn't be in

39:05

that relationship anymore or that job or whatever it is.

39:07

Right? And

39:08

why? Because they're you're always trying to spare

39:10

someone's feelings.

39:13

you know, you don't wanna say,

39:15

look, you should really

39:18

stop trying to

39:18

do whatever you're doing because I have to

39:20

tell you're really bad at it. or -- Yeah. --

39:23

stop pursuing this project.

39:23

It's not going well. You know? Andrew

39:26

Wilkinson pointed this out that

39:28

he he invested in companies

39:30

and there was a particular CEO I think

39:32

that he had and the CEO

39:34

wasn't doing a good job. And all

39:36

his friends could see it, but nobody

39:39

would tell him. And then when he finally

39:40

got around to firing the CEO, everybody was

39:42

like, oh yeah, you should've done that a year

39:44

ago. I've known that the whole time.

39:48

Okay. So Why

39:50

didn't you tell me that, like,

39:52

I had a business that relied

39:54

on the CEO

39:56

doing

39:57

a good job. Think about

39:59

what this cost him. The CEO is running the

40:00

company. This is my capital that's

40:03

invested in this company.

40:05

And you're telling me

40:06

that you knew for a long time that the CEO

40:08

wasn't doing a good job. And when he asked them about, they

40:10

said, well, I didn't wanna I didn't wanna hurt

40:13

your feelings. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I thought it'd

40:15

make you feel bad to think that you had hired someone bad,

40:16

and I felt bad, and I didn't wanna make, okay.

40:18

But look at the disservice that you did.

40:21

you know, if you really wanna be a great friend to

40:24

somebody, tell them the truth so

40:26

that they can

40:26

actually achieve your goals in the long run. And

40:28

if you wanna know how much you

40:31

really need this for yourself as friends who would tell you

40:33

the truth, but also it's really good to tell other

40:35

people the truth. Just know that I thought

40:38

about this concept. Like, this concept ended

40:40

up in the book because of conversation that I had with Daniel Donovan.

40:44

Nobel laureate. said

40:46

to me is everybody needs a good quitting

40:48

coach. You know? And I was like, oh, what

40:50

do you mean with that? And he said this. He goes,

40:52

they need someone who will tell them the

40:55

hard things that they need to hear. Right? When they can't

40:57

see it for themselves because we can never see

40:59

these things for ourselves. We can't see that

41:01

we're supposed to stop. It's hard for

41:03

us to see that we're not supposed to keep going off the mountain anymore. It's hard for us to see

41:05

when our startup is failing or the job we're in

41:07

isn't working out and we should just stick

41:10

it out. It's hard for us to

41:12

distinguish between hard things

41:14

that are worthwhile and hard things that are not

41:16

worthwhile. But other people can

41:18

generally see that much more clearly. And so he

41:20

told me like, He gets involved in

41:22

research projects all the time that really aren't

41:24

worth pursuing. Of course, he does.

41:26

And that he himself has a quitting

41:28

coach, and that quitting coach is

41:30

Richard Baylor. who

41:31

is also a Nobel laureate. Now wood that we

41:33

all had Nobel laureates

41:34

is our quitting coaches. Yes. Sure. The

41:36

lesson here is more like if you're

41:38

a Nobel laureate, whose Nobel Prize is

41:41

literally in good decision making, like the

41:43

mistakes that we

41:43

made. You know, and you feel like

41:46

you need someone to see him. It's still big

41:48

third parties. Yeah. Right. Because

41:49

you're gonna get trapped in all of these things

41:52

as well. Like, I'm

41:53

pretty sure if Daniel Donovan needs

41:55

a

41:55

quitting coach I sure need a quick question. Absolutely. And I

41:57

think your language in the book was, we need people who

41:59

love us, who aren't afraid to

42:02

hurt

42:02

our feelings you

42:04

know, and and I would say that one of the things I've noticed and as

42:06

I've gotten older, I've in my fifties

42:09

is is that on the one hand, we need to

42:11

be more honest with our friends. On

42:13

the other hand, we need to cultivate

42:16

friendships that have these qualities.

42:18

Right? And we need to say to our friends, tell

42:20

me what I don't wanna hear. I

42:22

I think we have to actively

42:24

cultivate that channel of

42:26

communication so that it

42:28

runs freely.

42:30

Well, getting

42:30

back to, if we could, for a moment,

42:32

to Stewart Butterfield, because I just

42:34

I just find the story so extraordinary.

42:36

he's you know, we only know that story to

42:38

some degree because Slack ended up becoming a twenty eight billion dollar

42:41

company. Right? because we don't tell the

42:44

stories of of kind of

42:46

making hard quitting decisions.

42:48

He he's he's a quitting

42:50

ninja because he did the same thing previously

42:52

with flicker. Right? Which was which

42:54

was born out of another

42:56

another gaming company which he shut down. So

42:58

I'm like, as you say, props to Stuart

43:00

Butterfield because that's Yeah. No. He's like he's like a

43:01

quinting god. Totally.

43:03

And and and I have to tell you, Annie,

43:05

that I am not. Stewart Butterfield may

43:08

not need your book, the rest of

43:10

us too. because I I had I had

43:12

my own experience of this, which

43:14

is I in the in my late

43:16

twenties, in the nineteen nineties, I started

43:18

a website called nerve dot

43:20

com. And it

43:22

was a great cultural success.

43:24

It was, you know, translated into

43:26

five languages. We did a TV show with

43:29

BO, we sold millions of copies of

43:31

books, but then in the two

43:33

thousands, it just sort of

43:35

went sideways.

43:36

And we ended up selling it

43:38

for Peanuts ten years later. And

43:40

when I look back on it,

43:42

I just see the opportunity costs. Right? All

43:45

the things I could have done with those

43:47

eight years. and I just didn't it did

43:49

not occur to me. I felt exactly

43:51

what Stewart Butterfield describes in

43:53

in that clip. which is

43:55

a sense of shame that I have,

43:57

you know, you

43:58

get stuck in this trap as

43:59

you say,

44:01

where basically the harder

44:03

you have to fight to get your business to work

44:05

or on whatever you're you're trying to do, the

44:07

more passionately you're trying to persuade everyone around

44:09

you that this is,

44:12

you know, that this has legs and the and the

44:14

greater a betrayal it

44:16

feels to, you know, to give

44:18

up hope. Now we ended up

44:20

actually starting

44:22

birthing two other companies out of that one,

44:24

which one of which was successful.

44:26

So so it sort of it

44:28

ended up working out pretty well. It's

44:31

very hard in retrospect to sort of, you know, retroactively analyze

44:33

your life and say, oh, well, I I

44:35

should I should have done

44:37

x Wiresy because we are a product of our failures and

44:39

successes, and it's You know, so I I always find

44:41

that difficult. But, yeah,

44:44

I certainly see that that it

44:46

was not that that

44:48

there was a huge amount of of of

44:50

kind of quitting shame

44:52

that kept me locked. And since then, you know,

44:54

I've had the pleasure of investing in companies

44:56

of younger entrepreneurs and helping advising younger entrepreneurs.

44:58

One of the things I've said to

45:00

them is if you're very successful,

45:04

that's liberating. If you completely fail, that's liberating.

45:06

But moderate success, survival

45:08

can be imprisoning. Right?

45:12

You can you can get

45:14

trapped in moderate success indefinitely. I completely

45:16

agree. You know, when

45:17

you think about a moderate

45:19

success. Right? So it's

45:22

really hard for us to quit things that we're losing at -- Mhmm. -- where

45:24

it's like really obvious

45:25

we should quit. So

45:28

imagine how hard

45:30

it is to quit something where you are winning. But it's

45:32

You're not winning enough and compared

45:34

to something else you could be doing, you

45:36

could be winning a lot more.

45:38

And by winning, I don't just mean money. I just

45:40

wanna be really clear

45:41

about that. Like, we can measure win

45:43

and happiness. Right?

45:46

So let's say that you're

45:48

in a relationship

45:50

and it's

45:51

fine. Right? It's like not terrible,

45:54

but you're also not, like, super excited

45:56

about it. think about

45:57

how hard it is to quit

45:59

those situations. I mean, we

46:00

see that all the time with friends. Right?

46:02

Like -- Mhmm. -- where they're saying, like,

46:04

I've put so much time into it, there's nothing

46:06

really that wrong. I really can't leave, you know,

46:09

and you hear all this stuff. And it's

46:11

like, but the problem is that maybe Slack

46:13

is around the corner.

46:16

whatever

46:16

the relationship equivalent of Slack is.

46:19

And regardless, the other thing

46:21

that you might be doing would

46:23

would probably be better. Maybe it's better for you not to be in

46:25

that relationship and take that time and spend it with your

46:28

friends. Mhmm. But we

46:29

we don't even we don't even

46:31

consider it because

46:32

the relationships

46:33

fine. Right? But, like,

46:35

I think that if you ask what

46:37

your goals were before you went into

46:39

that relationship, would you be okay if the

46:41

relationship ends up

46:42

being fine? I think everybody

46:44

would say no. That's

46:46

not

46:46

why I'm getting into the relationship. I'm looking

46:48

for a relationship and trying to find my

46:50

soulmate and someone who brings me joy and I'm excited to come home to every

46:52

day. You know, if I knew right

46:54

now

46:54

that it was gonna be it it

46:56

would be fine fine,

46:59

I wouldn't start it. But

47:01

once

47:01

you're in it and it's fine,

47:03

you can't leave. That's right.

47:05

It's not a

47:07

cause

47:07

fallacy. Right. So

47:08

we we stay in bad relationships. We stay in bad jobs.

47:10

And this is and by the way, this

47:12

is not just sort of speculative. Like,

47:15

there's this great I I think

47:17

it was Stephen Lovett, managed to get twenty thousand people to

47:20

flip a coin.

47:22

And and to decide whether

47:25

or not to leave their jobs, which which itself is just

47:28

astounding. Right? Twenty thousand people were

47:30

like, okay. Flip a coin, if it's heads you,

47:32

leave your job, if it tails you

47:34

don't. And not entirely

47:36

surprisingly. Right? The response is

47:38

people who chose to leave their jobs were

47:40

much happier. What was it? Six

47:42

months ago? Yeah. I

47:44

think actually I

47:44

think it's, like, once you once you kinda know it's

47:46

not

47:47

surprising, but, like, going in, it is actually kind

47:49

of surprising because we we have to think

47:51

about this setup. Right? So, yes, he he puts

47:53

up a website. And basically, you can go for any decision. Right?

47:56

So there's lots of people go do this. Some of the

47:57

decisions are small, like,

47:59

you know, what should

48:01

I for dinner? You know?

48:03

But I there's big life

48:05

decisions that people are going and flipping a coin for.

48:07

Like, should I leave my job? Should I leave

48:10

my partner? should I move? Things like that.

48:12

Right? So I want you to

48:14

think about someone

48:14

who's going and they're

48:16

willing to flip a coin.

48:19

a virtual coin to make

48:21

this decision.

48:21

Obviously, they're like super

48:24

fifty fifty on the decision. You have to be by

48:26

definition. Otherwise, you wouldn't go

48:28

do it. So that means that in their

48:30

minds, sticking

48:32

it out

48:33

and quitting

48:35

are equal

48:36

choices. Right? So they're stuck in the

48:38

decision. So they're feeling like

48:40

this is a total toss-up.

48:43

So now they go and they have the

48:45

virtual coin flip. So he looks at

48:47

the people who made these this is specifically

48:49

for big life decisions and he measures their

48:52

happiness after the coin flip. two months and six

48:54

months later. Now if we

48:56

think about if their judgment

48:58

is correct, that it

49:00

is a toss-up, Then what you expect

49:02

is that half the people who

49:04

chose to stay would be happier, and

49:06

like half the people who chose to quit would

49:08

be happier, so it would even out.

49:10

And there wouldn't really be a difference in the groups people who stayed

49:12

and people who didn't. Sure. Okay.

49:15

Because it's a

49:16

toss-up. Right? Yeah. But that's

49:18

not what he

49:18

found. He found on average the people who

49:21

quit were actually happier.

49:22

So what does this tell you?

49:25

what it tells you is that by the time

49:27

you get to the decision that it's

49:29

it's fifty fifty, like, by the time you

49:31

get that feeling of, like, I don't know what to

49:33

do. It's really close. It's not actually close at all.

49:35

Quitting is the clear winner.

49:36

That's right. If you're on the fence, this is the

49:38

thumbnail that I think I think you are for the book. If

49:41

you're on the fence, you should quit. Unless

49:44

you're thinking about quitting this podcast,

49:46

please don't. Because when we come

49:48

back, Annie will tell you the two things

49:50

you can do to change your relationship

49:55

with quitting

49:57

forever.

49:59

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so easy.

51:04

In

51:05

order to better

51:09

develop our our kind

51:12

of quitting

51:13

muscles. In

51:14

order to become more like steward butterfield,

51:16

it seems like there are a

51:18

number of specific things that we can do. You

51:20

talk about setting kill criteria

51:23

Like, what are the what are the takeaways

51:25

both as individuals and building

51:27

institutions? Like, I was fascinated by the

51:29

Google X example of how they

51:31

build a culture Right? A culture that embraces

51:34

failure that is disciplined on the

51:36

front end about figuring

51:38

out

51:39

how to be

51:40

willing to develop a quitting muscle, so to explore more

51:43

options to make better decisions. What are

51:45

the kind of takeaways you

51:47

would leave people with? Yeah.

51:49

So I I think there's really kinda, like, two big ideas.

51:51

Oh, it is. And this podcast is called the next big idea.

51:53

So there we go. That's

51:56

right. We'll take two or two is

51:58

great. Yeah. So there's

51:59

two big ideas. The first one we already discussed,

52:01

get yourself quitting coaches. So, you

52:04

know, I think part of that is you can think

52:06

about that for yourself personally, but you can

52:08

also think about that as

52:10

leadership in

52:10

an organization is that you

52:12

ought to be acting as quitting coaches

52:14

for people. You know, she'd let them know that

52:17

this is okay, and let them

52:18

know when the thing they're doing is no

52:20

longer worthwhile. Ron Conway

52:23

who founded SV Angel, is a

52:25

really big part of the book because an investor who encouraged

52:27

a lot of his

52:29

founders to quit. he

52:31

could see

52:32

very clearly that they

52:34

were,

52:34

you know, dead men walking or

52:36

dead women

52:37

walking, he would encourage

52:39

them to stop. you know,

52:40

to be more like Stewart Butterfield because he felt that that was his responsibility.

52:42

So he really viewed himself as a quitting coach. And

52:45

I think that we all need to do

52:48

that And we need to get that into

52:50

organizations. Right? So, Ashwin Teller, who you're referring to, he's the

52:52

CEO of X, which is

52:54

the innovation hub at Google.

52:57

And he really views himself as a

52:59

quitting coach, someone whose job it is to

53:01

get people to

53:03

abandon ideas that aren't worth

53:05

pursuing, particularly given what their

53:07

particular mission statement is, basically. Right? So

53:09

what they're trying to

53:12

do is take an

53:13

idea from,

53:15

you know, inception

53:18

to commercial viability

53:19

within five to

53:22

ten years. The

53:22

reason why they have this five to ten year timeline is that

53:24

they figure if it's gonna happen in less than

53:26

five years someone else is probably

53:28

already working on it.

53:30

And if it's gonna happen in more than ten years, then it will

53:32

probably be obsolete by the time you get there. So they just

53:35

have this

53:35

very specific directive.

53:38

They also say it has to be ten x world changing.

53:40

Right? It has it has to have

53:42

this outsized potential transformative

53:44

impact for the world. and they

53:47

developed among other things Waymo, which has now been spun out and it's worth, I

53:49

think, thirty billion dollars. Right.

53:52

Exactly.

53:52

So This is

53:53

their charter. It's very, very specific. It's an

53:56

innovation hub. So they're trying to create world

53:58

changing ideas in a

53:59

particular timeline. So what that means

54:02

is that they have to do a lot of quitting because

54:04

as Astra teller puts it,

54:06

if I can find out having spent two

54:08

million dollars an idea, that it's not

54:10

going to be ten x world

54:12

changing commercially

54:13

viable in five to ten years.

54:14

And I can find that on two million

54:16

instead of nine million. That's a

54:18

huge win. again, notice the reframe here because most people

54:21

would say, I can't quit now because then I'll have

54:23

wasted the two million dollars if I already put into

54:25

it. Mhmm. Yep. And he is actually looking at

54:27

it from the appropriate perspective, which

54:29

is, no, I'm saving seven million dollars. And so

54:31

he's

54:31

trying to show people and talk

54:34

about quitting and talking about the

54:36

savings that you get from shutting things

54:38

down early. like, the earlier you can spot it, the better off you are.

54:40

Yeah. And this

54:40

is a culture that I think

54:41

exists more broadly in the tech startup

54:44

world. Right? This

54:46

kind of this notion of minimum

54:48

viable products fail fast. And so it's a culture

54:50

that can be built both in

54:53

individuals and institutions. So

54:56

that's

54:56

the thing that Astra teller so concerned about is how

54:59

do you keep that innovative culture?

55:02

Right?

55:03

And something that that looks more like

55:05

an enterprise because it's bigger. Yeah. And

55:07

that's

55:07

what he's trying to do. So that that's where I think the

55:10

quitting

55:10

coaches are so important. But then goes along

55:12

with that is one, how

55:15

do you actually

55:16

he see

55:18

see

55:19

what you need to do and get to know fast. That's question one.

55:21

And then question two is how do you

55:23

actually execute on it? So

55:26

this is the thing that a quitting coach is trying to

55:28

really help you with. So in terms of

55:30

seeing how to get to know fast,

55:32

I think as

55:33

hoteler office that offers up, like,

55:35

an amazing mental

55:36

model, which he calls

55:37

monkeys and pedestals. Oh, I love

55:39

this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

55:42

So

55:42

it basically goes like this. Imagine you're trying

55:44

to train a monkey to juggle flaming torches

55:46

while standing on a pedestal in this town

55:48

square. So

55:50

let's say you're trying to do that, the question is, what are

55:52

you supposed

55:52

to do first? Are you supposed to try to train

55:54

the monkey to juggle the flaming torches?

55:55

Are you supposed to build the pedestal first?

55:57

And of course, like, don't build

55:59

the

55:59

pedestal until you know whether you can get the

56:02

monkey to juggle the

56:04

flaming torches. So that seems obvious as we understand it

56:06

from from that example, except

56:08

that that's not the way we

56:10

behave. We're

56:12

pedestal builders. And if you wanna

56:14

know that we're pedestal builders, what's the

56:16

first thing everybody says when you approach

56:17

a project? What's the

56:19

low hanging fruit? Mhmm.

56:20

Right. Right. People like to

56:23

start with the easy stuff. Let's let's watch some

56:25

business cards for let let's

56:27

develop a logo. Right. People

56:30

do

56:30

that all the time. Like, I remember caring about somebody who

56:32

was starting a business, and they didn't even

56:34

know whether the business was gonna work, but they

56:37

spent fifty thousand dollars

56:38

on a local. Yeah.

56:40

You know,

56:41

and it's like, what? You know? So, you

56:43

know, and that happens all the time, you're

56:45

designing the perfect business card. But

56:47

also, like, within organizations, when you're approaching

56:50

projects, people always say that, well, what's the low hanging fruit?

56:52

Let's tackle that first.

56:54

Okay. But you already know you can tackle the

56:56

low hanging fruit. That's why it's low hanging. There's no point in picking

56:58

any low hanging fruit off the tree if you can't

57:00

figure out that you can get to the stuff that's at

57:02

the top.

57:04

Don't

57:04

build pedestals because

57:05

you'll accumulate sunken. That will make it hard

57:07

for you to abandon when you find out that you

57:09

can't train the monkey.

57:10

You will still try. You

57:12

won't.

57:12

Right. Right. Start figure out

57:14

figure out the hard part first. Try

57:16

to solve that as quickly as possible.

57:19

and beware of false progress.

57:22

Right. And then

57:22

the second big idea here is

57:24

something called kill criteria,

57:26

which you mentioned. Yeah.

57:28

Yeah. And let's

57:28

go back to Daniel Connor and saying, the worst time to

57:30

ever make a decision is when you're in it.

57:32

Okay? So what kill criteria do is they get

57:34

you sort of out out of the decision.

57:38

So one of the biggest insights from Berry Star who

57:40

who is someone who has done a

57:42

tremendous amount of research in this space

57:44

of escalation of commitment was

57:47

we have the intuition that when we see the signals

57:49

in the world that tell us that we

57:51

ought to quit, that we will actually pay attention

57:53

to them and do it.

57:56

Right? Like, it seems obvious to us that if we were climbing

57:58

Everest and a snowstorm came

58:00

in that we turn around. If we were going

58:02

up a mountain and a fog rolled in,

58:05

that we would obviously turn around. If we were running

58:07

a marathon and on mile six, we

58:09

broke our leg that

58:11

we would stop. But

58:13

as you know from having read the

58:15

book,

58:17

no. No. That's a

58:20

statistic. Okay. a lot of

58:22

people a lot of people finished

58:24

marathons with broken legs. That was

58:26

astounding. Like, if it happens all the

58:28

time. Yeah. Yeah. It's that, like, all the time. It's not in your

58:30

book. So and we know that. Right?

58:31

Like, people just stick to things. You know, we

58:33

know that from

58:36

Steven Levitt. right, that people stick to things too long. We know that from the people who

58:38

continue it up on Everest past the

58:40

turnaround time. People stick to things too long.

58:42

So our intuition on this is just really,

58:44

really broken.

58:46

k?

58:46

So the question is, how do we get ourselves

58:49

to be better when we see

58:51

those signals

58:51

that we have to

58:54

walk away? how do we get

58:56

ourselves to be better at actually paying attention to them and executing

58:58

when we

58:59

see them? And you do that by

59:01

listening to what Daniel Hahneman

59:04

said. Don't do it when you're in it. What does that mean you have

59:06

to do? You have to do it before.

59:08

Right? When you start? That's

59:10

when you have to do it.

59:12

So

59:14

kill

59:14

criteria are basically a list of what are the

59:16

signals that I could be getting from the world that would

59:18

tell me that I need to reevaluate this or

59:20

in some cases that would

59:22

tell me just

59:24

flat out that I need to walk away. It's a

59:26

pre commitment to quit

59:28

if certain criteria aren't met.

59:31

and that's liberating. It's liberating for the

59:33

team and it results in results in

59:35

better decisions. And again, it makes

59:37

it so that you don't have

59:39

to they're from

59:40

that moment of failing to having failed.

59:42

Because if you

59:45

appropriately follow the

59:48

kill criteria, that is now a success. So a

59:50

way to turn quitting into a success.

59:52

Like a super simple example of a

59:56

kill criteria, would be what I used

59:58

in poker, which was a loss

59:59

limit. So

1:00:00

when I was playing poker and

1:00:02

I was playing in a cash game, I

1:00:05

would decide how much money I was willing to risk that night. And if

1:00:07

I went beyond that amount, if

1:00:09

I lost that amount, I

1:00:11

just walked away. Gary

1:00:13

Kasparov talks about system mindset versus

1:00:16

outcome mindset that you you always have to

1:00:18

be making decisions in a way that's

1:00:20

improving the system. you talk about

1:00:22

decision focusing on decision quality

1:00:24

rather than outcome. Right? That if we're

1:00:26

good scientists, and this is what I come

1:00:28

back to and I confront in my life, the shame

1:00:30

of failure which kind of

1:00:32

drives the fear of quitting. If we

1:00:34

can just take pride in being good

1:00:36

scientists, sometimes the

1:00:38

good scientists comes to the conclusion that their hypothesis was

1:00:40

wrong, but they still did good

1:00:42

science. Right? And that's I think, to some

1:00:44

degree, when we're building companies

1:00:46

and living

1:00:48

our lives, and trying to that

1:00:50

if we can basically take pride in high quality decision

1:00:52

making, living in a world of

1:00:54

limited

1:00:56

information, that that's good enough. And in the long run, results the

1:00:58

best outcomes. That's that's sort of my very,

1:01:00

very brief synopsis of what I've

1:01:02

taken away. No. I mean, I think I

1:01:06

think, look, I think that's exactly right. And I think it was incredibly

1:01:08

well said. The outcomes are gonna come

1:01:10

in the long run.

1:01:10

And a lot of this is really short

1:01:12

term thinking. And when you said you

1:01:16

know, that fear of failure, that shame

1:01:18

that

1:01:19

you feel with failure, you know, in some way,

1:01:21

stops us from

1:01:21

quitting. It's like, no. It like, in always, it stops

1:01:23

us from quitting.

1:01:26

So so much of it has to do with, like, not just the way that we feel

1:01:28

about ourselves, you know, internal validity, but

1:01:30

also the way that we think that other people are

1:01:33

gonna view us. That's challenge. Yes.

1:01:34

Right? So we shame ourselves.

1:01:35

We feel like other people are gonna shame us for

1:01:38

it. And, like, when I ran into

1:01:40

my adviser, right,

1:01:42

I felt terrible shame about having quit my program

1:01:44

even though I was forced to. Right? I was sick, but I

1:01:46

then I didn't come back, so

1:01:47

that was when I really quit.

1:01:50

and I felt really terrible shame about it. And then

1:01:52

when I got back in contact with her,

1:01:54

it was like, I was white knuckling

1:01:56

getting yelled

1:01:57

at from her.

1:01:59

for having quit, and it was completely

1:02:01

the opposite.

1:02:03

It was like, oh my

1:02:05

gosh, didn't you

1:02:06

live a life?

1:02:08

I'm

1:02:08

so happy.

1:02:10

And then

1:02:10

we continued on with our relationship.

1:02:12

And I just think about how sad

1:02:15

I am that

1:02:16

that feeling of

1:02:18

she must hate

1:02:19

me because I quit,

1:02:21

stop

1:02:21

me

1:02:24

from having you know,

1:02:24

there was a period where we weren't in contact because I felt

1:02:26

so much shame about it. Mhmm. And it's

1:02:28

one of the saddest things for

1:02:30

me in my whole life.

1:02:32

because

1:02:33

she's one of the most important people to

1:02:35

me, in many ways, very

1:02:36

much a mother to me, And

1:02:40

I'm so grateful that we got back in contact, but

1:02:42

I am so sad that my

1:02:44

own feeling of shame over having

1:02:48

quit stopped us

1:02:49

from having a relationship. You know? So I I think that

1:02:51

that is something that is is

1:02:54

so integrated into these

1:02:55

decisions for us.

1:02:58

you know,

1:02:58

and and I think it's a really important lesson to realize that

1:03:01

we normally have it

1:03:02

wrong. Howard Bauchner: Yeah, absolutely

1:03:04

right. Yeah, this

1:03:05

the the shame is

1:03:08

misplaced. and that everybody's in the end has our back. And

1:03:10

I'm so happy, Annie, that

1:03:12

here at the end of our conversation,

1:03:15

we've come to the heart of your

1:03:17

existential crisis. That drove

1:03:20

that drove the book. And I'm so glad that it

1:03:22

did. I don't think it was really an existential crisis.

1:03:24

I think I think it's really a

1:03:26

a really brilliant and highly

1:03:29

rational assessment of the distorted lens

1:03:31

we all see the world through and it's

1:03:33

it's so helpful and and I'm

1:03:35

so grateful to your insights both in

1:03:37

the book and in this conversation.

1:03:39

Thank you for for

1:03:41

being with us. Oh, well, thank

1:03:42

you so much. This was this was so I mean,

1:03:44

I guess it was fun and I guess maybe

1:03:46

it was a little bit of therapy for

1:03:50

me now. and you made me actually

1:03:52

view why I wrote the book in a different way

1:03:54

that I think is really eye

1:03:56

opening really eye opening for me

1:03:57

for me. And I just

1:03:59

I

1:04:00

I really love this conversation. So thank you so much for

1:04:02

having me. That

1:04:08

was Annie Duke. Author of the new book quit the

1:04:10

power of knowing when to walk away.

1:04:12

You can pick up a copy wherever

1:04:14

books are sold including in the next

1:04:17

big idea app. And while you're there,

1:04:19

why not check out some of our

1:04:21

book bytes? These are twelve

1:04:23

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1:04:25

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1:04:28

like Walter Isaacson and Lamont,

1:04:30

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1:04:32

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1:04:34

insights from their books directly

1:04:36

with you. To get started,

1:04:38

all you have to do is download the

1:04:40

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1:04:42

idea app. If you enjoyed this episode and you're looking for something else to

1:04:44

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1:04:46

and check out the episode titled

1:04:48

thinking ahead. where our curator

1:04:50

Malcolm Gladwell and best selling author

1:04:52

Steve and Johnson share their

1:04:54

strategies for making smart

1:04:56

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1:04:58

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1:05:02

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1:05:04

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1:05:19

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1:05:22

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1:05:24

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1:05:26

The team at the LinkedIn podcast

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network are our quitting coaches. I'm

1:05:30

Rufus Griskam. See you

1:05:32

next week.