From Annie Duke’s book, “Quit”
Why you need a Quit Coach.
- “If there’s one thing that you’ve learned from this book, it’s that just knowing about the problem, doing a thought experiment of taking somebody else’s perspective and trying to see it from the outside, looking in on yourself, is something you cannot do. That’s why Daniel Kahneman thinks he needs a quitting coach, and why we all ought to see that need. Life is just too short to be spending our time on things that aren’t worthwhile. We all need people around us who will tell us when we’re on the wrong path.” (p. 196)
- “When you find that friend, ask them to be your quitting coach, to be that person who helps you figure out when to abandon course. If Daniel Kahneman, whose life’s work has been studying cognitive biases and decision errors, needs a quitting coach, then everybody needs one. Kahneman’s happens to be fellow Nobel laureate Richard Thaler. Most of us aren’t lucky enough to have somebody of that stature play that role for us, but we should all try to find someone to be that person in our life who tells us the truth, whether it’s a close friend, a mentor, a coworker, a sibling, or a parent. They just have to be someone who has our long-term best interests at heart and is willing to tell us what we need to hear, not what we want to hear.” (p. 189)
- “While a quitting coach can help by offering you a fresh perspective, uncontaminated by your growing katamari, you’re ultimately still the one who has to choose to walk away, and that means you can ignore the advice of your quitting coach. Having a coach improves the chances that you’re going to get to quitting sooner than you otherwise would without one. But, just like Conway’s founders, a lot of times you’re going to rebuff the attempt.” (p. 190)
- “What does Conway do to counter these vehement arguments? Nothing. He agrees with them that they can make it work. He doesn’t try to convince the founders that they’re wrong. Instead, he asks them what success would look like over the next few months. And he asks them for specifics. That conversation allows him to sit down with the founder and set performance benchmarks that would signal that the company was heading in the right direction. Then, they agree when to revisit those benchmarks and, if the venture is falling short, to have a serious discussion about shutting it down. This probably sounds a lot like Conway is using kill criteria, and that’s because he is. The founder comes away from the conversation believing they’ve convinced Conway they can turn it around. Conway’s opinion, you’ve probably guessed, hasn’t changed. He comes away still believing that if the founder could see what he sees, they would shut the endeavor down that day. But he knows it’s generally futile to try to persuade them right then. Having set these kill criteria, which the founder has helped generate, Conway has markedly increased the probability that, when they revisit the issue, the founder will be able to see past their own biases and come to the right decision.” (p. 182)
- “Instead, when someone comes to you, it’s better to use Ron Conway’s approach, which can be summarized in these four steps. STEP 1 | Let them know that you think they should consider quitting. STEP 2 | When they push back, retreat and agree with them that they can turn the situation around. STEP 3 | Set very clear definitions around what success is going to look like in the near future and memorialize them down as kill criteria. STEP 4 | Agree to revisit the conversation and, if the benchmarks for success haven’t been met, you’ll have a serious discussion about quitting. Implicit in steps 3 and 4 is that the person you’re counseling has now given you permission to speak freely and bluntly about abandoning course. Of course, all the while, you should remind them that life’s too short.” (p. 195)
- “When you are making a decision about whether to quit, you need to listen to those people from the past who are giving you important advice. Sometimes, the person sending you a message is someone who has traveled a similar path before you. And sometimes, the person traveling from the past is an earlier version of yourself.” (p. 40)
- “The work on escalation of commitment over the last forty-five years—in different laboratory experiments, field experiments, and explanations of commonly observed behavior—has shown that this type of entrapment in losing causes occurs across a variety of settings and circumstances. There are all sorts of ways we get stuck in our decisions. Presented with the opportunity and the relevant information, we will over-persist, rejecting the chance to quit and backing up our original decision by spending even more resources to try to save the endeavor. This is true whether it involves spending more time waiting in line or waging an unwinnable war, or staying in bad relationships and bad jobs too long, or pouring money into a car that’s worth less than the repairs are costing us. It’s why a house can become a money pit. It’s why we won’t leave a terrible movie because we have already started watching it. It’s why businesses continue to develop and support products that are clearly failing, or pursue strategies long after conditions have changed.” (p. 83)
- “When we are in the losses, we are not only more likely to stick to a losing course of action, but also to double down. This tendency is called escalation of commitment.” (p. 84)
- “A perfectly rational decision-maker would consider only the future costs and benefits in deciding whether to continue with a course of action. In other words, if continuing on has a positive expected value, a rational actor would persevere. If it has a negative expected value, they would quit.” (p. 89)
Other Good Quotes:
“In large part, we are what we do, and our identity is closely connected with whatever we’re focused on, including our careers, relationships, projects, and hobbies. When we quit any of those things, we have to deal with the prospect of quitting part of our identity. And that is painful.” (p. 132)
“To anybody who thinks they can be objective about quitting decisions, the results of the field studies in major professional sports should be super alarming. You’ve got smart people, a data-rich environment, a tight feedback loop, and a lot of motivation. For most of the quitting decisions we make, we have much less information and we have longer, noisier feedback loops.” (p. 149)
“You’ve probably heard people (including yourself), when thinking about taking a new path, say, “I don’t want to make a decision right now.” You likely accepted that as a reasonable thing to say. But once you step back and think about it, you realize that deciding not to change is itself a decision. At any moment, when you’re pursuing a goal, you are choosing to either stay on the path you’re on or change course. Sticking with the path is as much of a decision as choosing to quit. In fact, the decision about whether to stay or go is by definition the same choice.” (p. 152)