Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

by Annie Duke

We view grit and quit as opposing forces. After all, you either persevere or you abandon course. You can’t do both at the same time, and in the battle between the two, quitting has clearly lost. While grit is a virtue, quitting is a vice.

By definition, anybody who has succeeded at something has stuck with it. That’s a statement of fact, always true in hindsight. But that doesn’t mean that the inverse is true, that if you stick to something, you will succeed at it.

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. Escalation of commitment is robust and universal, occurring in individuals, organizations, and governmental entities. All of us tend to get stuck in courses of action once started, especially in the face of bad news. Escalation of commitment doesn’t just occur in high-stakes situations. It also happens when the stakes are low, demonstrating the pervasiveness of the error.

Here’s a simple example. You put a political sign in your yard for a particular candidate because you support them. Their policies align with your values. You volunteer at their campaign office. You canvass for them. You put campaign bumper stickers on your car. Then, information comes out that the candidate was involved in a horrible scandal. The scandal is sufficiently bad that if you had heard this at the beginning of the election cycle, before you had made your choice, you would not have supported them in the first place. But you’ve already publicly asserted your support of the candidate. Your neighbors know you support them. So does anybody who has visited your house or driven by and seen the sign on your front lawn. What do you do now? Dissonance theory predicts that you won’t yank all those signs out of your yard or peel the sticker off your car. Instead, you’ll continue your support, even escalating your commitment, by rationalizing away the new information. The other party is trying to smear your candidate. The establishment is trying to bring them down. One of the things that you love about them is that they thumb their nose at the establishment.

This very much forms the base to entire right vs left debate

This unfettered belief in the power of optimism is, of course, widespread in Silicon Valley, which makes Ron Conway a contrarian in a world where being overly optimistic is not only considered a job requirement for founders but is also actively encouraged. And that ethos is reflected in founders’ actual beliefs. A survey of three thousand entrepreneurs found that 81% of founders put their odds of success at 70% or better and a third of founders put their odds of success at 100%! Given that only about one in ten of the ambitious ventures Conway invests in generates a positive return, that optimism borders on the delusional.

Lots of hard things are worth pursuing and grit is good for getting you to stick with it when it’s right. But lots of hard things are not worth pursuing and the ability to walk away when it’s right is also a skill worth developing. Hopefully this book has given you the tools to do that. Ultimately, where you’re going—where we’re all going—is along whatever route will have the greatest expected value throughout our lives. That path is going to involve a lot of quitting. Contrary to popular belief, winners quit a lot. That’s how they win.