Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey there. This week, we're going to replay our
Speaker 1: most popular science episode. Professional poker player and cognitive scientist
Speaker 1: Annie Duke talks about the science of quitting. Annie just
Speaker 1: published the book she was writing when we first recorded
Speaker 1: our conversation. It's called Quit, The Power of Knowing When
Speaker 1: to Walk Away, and fun fact, I'm one of the
Speaker 1: characters in the book. In this episode, Annie offers a
Speaker 1: helpful roadmap for making better decisions and mastering the skill
Speaker 1: of quitting. I wanted to share this episode again as
Speaker 1: we enter the holiday season because it's a time when
Speaker 1: many of us reflect on past choices and think through
Speaker 1: what's up ahead. I've kept Annie's wisdom front and center,
Speaker 1: and I hope you will too. Next week we'll be
Speaker 1: back with more new episodes of season five. Of a
Speaker 1: slight change of plans, I'll see then. What I found
Speaker 1: out is that like there's all these like great words
Speaker 1: for grit, including like heroism, right like steadfast, right like perseverance,
Speaker 1: Like grit is one of those words that's like a
Speaker 1: super super positive connotation, like sticktuitiveness. But when you look
Speaker 1: at quit, there's hardly any words that like are nice.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the synonyms for quit is
Speaker 1: the word coward. Annie Duke knows a lot about quitting.
Speaker 1: It's something she got really good at when she was
Speaker 1: a professional poker player on the world stage, and a
Speaker 1: really successful one at that. We're talking over four million
Speaker 1: dollars in prize money. And what distinguishes great poker players
Speaker 1: from everybody else is that is mainly quitting. They quit
Speaker 1: a lot more. So they're just very good at cutting
Speaker 1: their losses, so they fold more hands to start. Once
Speaker 1: they've committed money to a pot, they fold a lot more.
Speaker 1: They change tactics or strategies like in the middle of things,
Speaker 1: and you have to be willing to do that. Annie's
Speaker 1: rallying cry is that we should quit a lot more.
Speaker 1: I know it's not something we hear often, and that's
Speaker 1: exactly why I've been so excited to have Annie on
Speaker 1: this show, to teach us something that goes against common
Speaker 1: wisdom but can actually change our lives for the better.
Speaker 1: Annie's the best selling author of two books, Thinking in
Speaker 1: Bets and How to Decide, But today she's going to
Speaker 1: give us a sneak peek of her upcoming book on
Speaker 1: the science of quitting. She'll show us how to get
Speaker 1: out of her own way and learn how to quit
Speaker 1: when we should. I'm maya Shunker, and this is a
Speaker 1: slight change of plans, a show about who we are
Speaker 1: and who we become in the face of a big change.
Speaker 1: Poker wasn't always in the cards for Annie. She actually
Speaker 1: started out at the University of Pennsylvania studying cognitive science,
Speaker 1: specifically how we make decisions and times of uncertainty. I
Speaker 1: was fully intending to become a professor, which is kind
Speaker 1: of what you do with that kind of degree. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have a whole lot of practical application, and I
Speaker 1: actually had all of my what are called job talks
Speaker 1: lined up, and I've been struggling for a couple of
Speaker 1: months with a stomach problem, and I thought, I'm just
Speaker 1: going to power through this, and it turned out that
Speaker 1: my body said no, you can't power through it. And
Speaker 1: in fact, the powering through it meant that I ended
Speaker 1: up in the hospital because I sort of wasn't taking
Speaker 1: care of this problem, and so I was in the
Speaker 1: hospital for a couple of weeks, very sick. So I
Speaker 1: decided to take a year off to try to recuperate,
Speaker 1: and there was a little bit of a bind right,
Speaker 1: because so I've been forced to quit for a year
Speaker 1: and I can't I don't want to start a new
Speaker 1: career because I'm going to go back and become an
Speaker 1: academic and I don't know how I'm going to feel
Speaker 1: from day today. So I need something that has like
Speaker 1: super flexible hours. And I really desperately need money, because
Speaker 1: it turns out when you leave graduate school for a year,
Speaker 1: your fellowship does not leave with you. You give it up. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I did not have any money. So my brother
Speaker 1: actually suggested to me that I could play poker and
Speaker 1: that that might be like the perfect thing for me
Speaker 1: to do because obviously I could set my own hours,
Speaker 1: and you know, I could just do it to make
Speaker 1: some money on the side. And you know what, I
Speaker 1: just I sat down at the table and it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, when like in the movies, I'll have like
Speaker 1: the heavens open up and the angels are singing. It
Speaker 1: felt a little bit like that to me, because when
Speaker 1: I thought about what I've been studying a graduate school,
Speaker 1: this was that, in other words, this problem of how
Speaker 1: do you make really great decisions under uncertainty, and poker
Speaker 1: is like super uncertain You can't see the other players cards,
Speaker 1: and in the short run there's a really really strong
Speaker 1: influence of luck, which makes the decision making problem really hard,
Speaker 1: and it's really high stakes in real time. And sort
Speaker 1: of from the moment I sat down at the table,
Speaker 1: it turned out I had a knack for it. So
Speaker 1: I didn't actually end up going back to graduate school
Speaker 1: because I loved this so much and I was experiencing
Speaker 1: a lot of success. Within a couple of years, I'd
Speaker 1: played at the World Series of Poker, I was making
Speaker 1: final tables, I cashed in the main event, ended up
Speaker 1: moving to Las Vegas, and this is what I really
Speaker 1: concentrated on for quite a while. And then in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two there was a new aha, which was
Speaker 1: that there was this amazing conversation to be had between
Speaker 1: cognitive science and poker, a poker sort of informing the
Speaker 1: cognitive science and the cognitive science informing the poker. So
Speaker 1: I started consulting and speaking full time and really wanted
Speaker 1: to write a book about these topics that I had
Speaker 1: really been exploring. So it looks like I've changed careers
Speaker 1: a lot, you know, from academic to poker player to
Speaker 1: speaker and consultant to author back to academic it seems
Speaker 1: like a lot of zigging and zagging, but there's this
Speaker 1: through line through everything, which is learning under uncertainty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so quitting gets such a bad rep right. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I loved learning from you
Speaker 1: is that it's evident, even in the English language, that
Speaker 1: we are biased against quitting. Can you share more about that? Sure?
Speaker 1: So you have hero as a synonym, like heroism is
Speaker 1: a synonym for grittiness, and then cowardice as a synonym
Speaker 1: for quitting. And also, just by the way, one of
Speaker 1: the things I point out is we have this word grittiness,
Speaker 1: but we don't have a word quittiness, which is telling
Speaker 1: in and of itself. Right. So obviously there are some
Speaker 1: negative ways to describe being too gritty, like stubbornness or rigidity,
Speaker 1: but they're few and far between. Mostly they're like amazing, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're such a hero, You're so gritty, you have perseverance, sticktuitiveness, pluck,
Speaker 1: you're very plucky, right of metal. And then on the quickside,
Speaker 1: it's just like you're a coward, right, You're capricious, like
Speaker 1: all of these things. So I think that it's really
Speaker 1: reflected in the English language. And then it's kind of
Speaker 1: reflected in if you think about the way that we
Speaker 1: process a narrative, right, we don't really see the quitters.
Speaker 1: Like what we think about is the people the heroes
Speaker 1: are the ones who persevere beyond the point of physical
Speaker 1: or emotional or mental well being in order to push
Speaker 1: past that and like cross the chasm. But the problem,
Speaker 1: of course is that a lot of times those people
Speaker 1: have put themselves in danger in a situation where you
Speaker 1: really ought to have turned around. And what I think
Speaker 1: is really interesting, and I talk about this in the book,
Speaker 1: is that from a narrative standpoint, we'd prefer somebody to
Speaker 1: push past the point of sensibility and persevere and actually
Speaker 1: perish to somebody who rightly quits early, Like, which do
Speaker 1: you think of is the more admirable person. So one
Speaker 1: of the examples, like I've given the book is if
Speaker 1: you think about Everest, right when we think about somebody
Speaker 1: like Rob Hall. So for those people who don't know,
Speaker 1: like if you've read the book Into Thin Air or
Speaker 1: you've seen the documentary Everest. This was in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six and there was a it was a disastrous year
Speaker 1: where a lot of people died on the mountain on
Speaker 1: everest and Rob Hall, who was this amazing alpinist and
Speaker 1: expedition leader, was one of those people who perished, and
Speaker 1: he is very much painted as a hero of that story.
Speaker 1: He had set turnaround times for every single day, and
Speaker 1: a turnaround time is just if you haven't gotten to
Speaker 1: point A by this time, you must turn around and
Speaker 1: go back to whatever camp you're coming from. The reason
Speaker 1: being that there's a very very dangerous part of that
Speaker 1: mountain called the South Ridge, and you do not want
Speaker 1: to descend the South Ridge in darkness. You'll fall like
Speaker 1: eight thousand feet into Nepal. And Rob Hall broke the
Speaker 1: turnaround time, so you know, and obviously it resulted in tragedy.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting is that there were some people
Speaker 1: who followed the turnaround time who are also described in
Speaker 1: the book. They're also in the documentary, and nobody remembers
Speaker 1: their names, just so you know, Touching Santaski and Kaciki.
Speaker 1: These are three people who turned around at the right
Speaker 1: time and made these great decisions, and they're totally invisible
Speaker 1: to us because they aren't the heroes of our narratives.
Speaker 1: And that's part of the problem. Like, how do you
Speaker 1: get people like that to be the hero of your narrative? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you also just close the loot for listeners on
Speaker 1: Rob Hall? So just noting that the reason he did
Speaker 1: not follow the turnaround times he was trying to help
Speaker 1: this guy get up had previously not been able to
Speaker 1: get up, And do you mind just sharing that because
Speaker 1: I think that's such an emotionally evocative part of the story,
Speaker 1: which is like we can't quit a second time, you know. Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Rob Paul actually got to the top, but then
Speaker 1: he waited there for two hours for a guy named
Speaker 1: Doug Hanson. And the question is why, right, Like why
Speaker 1: why he was already an hour passed the turnaround time.
Speaker 1: Doug Hanson clearly was well passed the turnaround time and
Speaker 1: was not nearly as skill the climber as Rob Hall was,
Speaker 1: So why didn't he turn around? And you have to
Speaker 1: rewind to the year before to understand kind of what
Speaker 1: the forces were that caused him to do that. So
Speaker 1: the year before was a very bad climbing year. So
Speaker 1: Rob Hall had tried to sum up with a group
Speaker 1: and Doug Hanson was in the group and they came
Speaker 1: back down, so they had abandoned their summit attempt. So
Speaker 1: now he convinces Doug Hanson to come back the next
Speaker 1: year because he says, I'll get you up the second time.
Speaker 1: And now we can see these forces like this is
Speaker 1: one of the big forces that causes us to not quit.
Speaker 1: And the phrase that I think is such a great
Speaker 1: phrase for us to really internalize it is called in
Speaker 1: the losses. So when we're in the losses, we have
Speaker 1: the desire to get those back, and we don't think about, well,
Speaker 1: what's the probability that I would actually be able to succeed?
Speaker 1: That's number one. We don't think about if I go
Speaker 1: for this, what are the opportunities I'm going to give
Speaker 1: up by going for it? Right, And that's true of
Speaker 1: anything like if you're in an monogamous relationship, you're obviously
Speaker 1: foregoing the opportunities to date other people. If you're in
Speaker 1: a job, you're foregoing the other opportunities to have other
Speaker 1: full time jobs. So this is a really actually big
Speaker 1: problem is that we tend not to see what we're
Speaker 1: giving up in terms of the other opportunities that might
Speaker 1: be available to us when we're on a particular path.
Speaker 1: So if you think about climbing everest. When we're thinking
Speaker 1: about trying to reach the summit, it causes this like myopia,
Speaker 1: we can't see like other things, other opportunities that we
Speaker 1: might have in our life, like to climb other mountains,
Speaker 1: or to spend time with our families, or whatever it
Speaker 1: else it is we might want to do that that
Speaker 1: pursuing that goal might actually make less likely for us
Speaker 1: to be able to do exactly. Okay, so Annie, I'd
Speaker 1: love to dig into some of the behavioral biases we
Speaker 1: face that interfere with our ability to quit when we
Speaker 1: ought to do. You mind talking with listeners about escalation
Speaker 1: of commitment? Sure? Have you ever heard of the game Katamari? So?
Speaker 1: Katamari is a game where it's the weirdest game. You
Speaker 1: start with this little tiny speck of something and you
Speaker 1: roll it around and it starts to pick stuff up,
Speaker 1: and if it picks things up that are smaller than
Speaker 1: it is, it will pick it up and it will
Speaker 1: grow in size. If you try to pick something up
Speaker 1: that's bigger than the ball that you're rolling around, it
Speaker 1: will cause the ball to become smaller again. So the
Speaker 1: ideas you're trying to create a ball that's big enough
Speaker 1: that you can start picking up planet and it becomes
Speaker 1: like the size of a son. So you start off
Speaker 1: with this little ball that's like picking up specs of
Speaker 1: dust and flies, and you're rolling it around like in
Speaker 1: a room, and you're like pick. Then you start picking
Speaker 1: up bottles, you pick up the cat, you know, you
Speaker 1: pick up like the couch, and then you start picking
Speaker 1: up houses, and you can pick up mountains, and this
Speaker 1: thing just becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And when
Speaker 1: I think about what happens to us that we don't quit,
Speaker 1: I think about Katamari because I think that it's such
Speaker 1: a great visual for understanding escalation of commitment. And it
Speaker 1: basically goes this way. You put time, resources, money, your
Speaker 1: own identity. Right Like if you think about a career
Speaker 1: or a major, it becomes part of your identity. Who
Speaker 1: am I? I'm a doctor? Who am I? You know?
Speaker 1: I am an English major or I'm an engineer or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: these things become part of our identity. And then we're
Speaker 1: putting time and effort and money and all of this
Speaker 1: stuff resources into this thing. Those the fact that we've
Speaker 1: dumped all of that into the decision to be on
Speaker 1: the path that we're on means that when we're faced
Speaker 1: with a decision about whether to quit or persevere, we're
Speaker 1: going to have a tendency to persevere because we've accumulated
Speaker 1: all of this debris like a Katamari ball. But what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that the fact that that pushes us to
Speaker 1: persevere means that now we persevere, and now we put
Speaker 1: more time and more effort and more money and more
Speaker 1: resources and more of our identity into the thing that
Speaker 1: we're doing, which means that the next point that we're
Speaker 1: thinking about whether to quit or persevere, the ball is bigger.
Speaker 1: It's starting to become house sized, which makes us then
Speaker 1: more likely to persevere again, and so on so forth,
Speaker 1: until you have like this katamari that's the size of
Speaker 1: a planet, and you kind of can't quit at that point.
Speaker 1: So now if we go back to Rob Haul, we
Speaker 1: can see the problem right because he's carrying a lot
Speaker 1: of that with him. He failed the year before, He's
Speaker 1: made a promise to Doug Hanson and that he's going
Speaker 1: to get him up, and that causes this myopia for
Speaker 1: him to sort of, I think, not to see the
Speaker 1: situation for what it is, which is one that you
Speaker 1: should quit, go back down the mountain, grab Doug Hanson,
Speaker 1: and then you know, maybe you have a chance the
Speaker 1: next year. I'm wondering, Annie, if you can talk a
Speaker 1: bit about the role of regret and all this, because
Speaker 1: there is a regret asymmetry that's important to acknowledge here,
Speaker 1: which is, we tend to feel a lot of regret
Speaker 1: when we think about the idea of quitting, but somehow
Speaker 1: staying with the status quo does not fill us with
Speaker 1: those same feelings of regret. And so can you just
Speaker 1: talk to listeners a bit about regret asymmetry generally and
Speaker 1: how that plays a profound role in our conception of quitting. Right,
Speaker 1: it's an antagonist towards quitting. Yeah. So there's two really
Speaker 1: important biases to think about because they collide here when
Speaker 1: it comes to quitting. The first cognitive bias is called
Speaker 1: status quo bias. Status quo bias is that we have
Speaker 1: a preference for the path that we're already on. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we don't like to change. We have a preference
Speaker 1: to keep going the way that we're going. That collides
Speaker 1: with another bias, which is called omission comission bias, and
Speaker 1: what that is is that failing to act does not
Speaker 1: feel as much like a decision as acting does. Right, So,
Speaker 1: let's say that I'm in a career or I'm in
Speaker 1: a relationship and I just stay the path. It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like I've made a decision. If I move, if
Speaker 1: I quit my job and change, if I break up
Speaker 1: in the relationship, now it feels like I've actually made
Speaker 1: a decision. Now. The reason why this is an error
Speaker 1: is because the decision to stay in the job is
Speaker 1: also an active decision, and you should treat it the
Speaker 1: same way like our regret treats those two things differently. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let say that you're in a job that is
Speaker 1: just awful. I have had conversations with people quite often
Speaker 1: where this happens. They come to me and they say,
Speaker 1: I really hate my job. I'm trying to decide whether
Speaker 1: I should quit. I don't really know what I should do.
Speaker 1: And I ask them this question. Imagine it's a year
Speaker 1: from now and you're still in the job that you're in.
Speaker 1: Do you think you'll be happy? And they say no.
Speaker 1: So what they're telling me is that one hundred percent
Speaker 1: of the time, twelve months from now, I will be
Speaker 1: unhappy in the job. That I'm in. So now I
Speaker 1: say to them, Okay, let's say that you quit this
Speaker 1: job and you go get this other job that you're
Speaker 1: thinking about. Imagine it's a year from now. Do you
Speaker 1: think you'll be happy? And they'll say, well, some of
Speaker 1: the time, you know, they'll say, let's just say they
Speaker 1: say it's a fifty fifty chance. Okay, So they say,
Speaker 1: if I switch fifty percent of the time, I'll be happy.
Speaker 1: Fifty percent of the time I won't. Now, when I
Speaker 1: put it that way, it becomes obvious that you ought
Speaker 1: to quit because one path you're unhappy one hundred percent
Speaker 1: of the time, and another path you're unhappy fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the time. So it seems clear that you ought
Speaker 1: to go take the other job. But this is where
Speaker 1: the regret asymmetry comes in, which is like, we're very
Speaker 1: tolerant of the unhappiness that occurs and just staying the course,
Speaker 1: and we're very intolerant of the unhappiness that might occur
Speaker 1: if we switch, and that they'll actually express that out loud.
Speaker 1: They'll say, but what if I take the new job
Speaker 1: and I'm unhappy, I'll feel like such an idiot Versus
Speaker 1: staying the job. That I know I hate, and I
Speaker 1: already know have evidence I'm unhappy in. Yeah. Right, we'll
Speaker 1: be back in a moment with a slight change of
Speaker 1: plans when Annie will share scientific strategies you can use
Speaker 1: to quit more often and sooner. One of the things
Speaker 1: that you said before that really struck me is around
Speaker 1: this concept of identity. And the reason is that so
Speaker 1: much of a slight change of plans is about our identity,
Speaker 1: how fixed we can feel in our sense of identity
Speaker 1: in the face of a big change, and how it
Speaker 1: is that we can navigate that. And one of the
Speaker 1: things you alluded to is we can sometimes resist quitting
Speaker 1: even when we know we ought to, because we attach
Speaker 1: that pursuit so closely to our identity, or we take
Speaker 1: so much pride in our identity as good decision makers,
Speaker 1: we don't like the idea of having it revealed to
Speaker 1: us that maybe we didn't actually make a great decision
Speaker 1: in the first place when we decided to do X
Speaker 1: or Y. And I'm wondering if you have tips for
Speaker 1: listeners about how it is that we can disentangle our
Speaker 1: sense of identity from these kinds of decisions or from
Speaker 1: the attachment we have towards certain pursuits so that we
Speaker 1: can make clear choices, more rational choices at these inflection points.
Speaker 1: So you talked about like, it's really hard for us
Speaker 1: to imagine that we made a bad decision, so we
Speaker 1: won't give it up. But I also want to add
Speaker 1: in there, sometimes we made a perfectly good decision but
Speaker 1: the circumstances have changed. But in that situation, we don't
Speaker 1: want to give up because somehow we think it invalidates
Speaker 1: the decision that we made in the first place, which
Speaker 1: isn't true. Remember, we're making decisions under uncertainty. And I
Speaker 1: think that's part of the problem is we forget that
Speaker 1: there's a third possibility, which is you made a perfectly
Speaker 1: fine decision and then you found out new stuff. And
Speaker 1: that's also by the true in relationships, like given what
Speaker 1: you knew at the time, it seems like a really
Speaker 1: good match, and then you found out new stuff, like
Speaker 1: that person might have changed. I think that's incredibly important
Speaker 1: for people to understand, is that sometimes stuff just changes.
Speaker 1: It's okay, doesn't mean that you that you messed up
Speaker 1: in the first place, and very often most of the
Speaker 1: time you didn't mess up in the first place, Like
Speaker 1: if you put a sign on your lawn for a
Speaker 1: candidate and then the candidate gets involved in some scandal,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean it was like it was a bad
Speaker 1: decision for you to vote for them in the first
Speaker 1: place because you didn't know. Yeah, And I love the
Speaker 1: thought experiment that you give, which I think elucidates this
Speaker 1: concept well, which is when you ask people what's the
Speaker 1: best decision you've ever made, what's the worst decision you've
Speaker 1: ever made? We tend to not focus on the process
Speaker 1: by which we made the decision or the inputs to
Speaker 1: that decision, but instead what the outcome was. So what
Speaker 1: you found is you asked people what was the best decision, Well,
Speaker 1: they tend to choose the thing that had the best outcome,
Speaker 1: and vice versa for the bad one. And it's very possible,
Speaker 1: like you said that, let's say you made actually a
Speaker 1: really crappy decision, but you just lucked out right, like
Speaker 1: chance worked in your favor and new information appeared or whatnot,
Speaker 1: and you ended up with a good outcome. But I
Speaker 1: think that is a really helpful thought experiment because to
Speaker 1: your point, you might have very well made the decision
Speaker 1: to take on a pursuit or support a certain candidate,
Speaker 1: and it was a very smart choice given all the
Speaker 1: information you had had at that moment, or by the
Speaker 1: way your own preferences can change. I just want to like,
Speaker 1: I want to make that really clear. Like I know,
Speaker 1: for me, like the things that I thought that I
Speaker 1: wanted for myself in my twenties are like very different
Speaker 1: than the things that I wanted for myself in my thirties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what's interesting there is that if somebody else were
Speaker 1: to look at the path you're on, like if somebody
Speaker 1: else were to look at the decision about whether you
Speaker 1: should sell that stock, or the decision about whether you
Speaker 1: should change careers, they'll often see that more clearly than
Speaker 1: you because they're not endowed to it. If you have
Speaker 1: somebody else looking at the decision, they don't have this,
Speaker 1: they don't have the dissonance. They don't. They don't they're
Speaker 1: not worried about squaring your past actions with your future
Speaker 1: actions or your present actions. They're just worried about whether
Speaker 1: it's sort of the best decision for you going forward.
Speaker 1: So you can see that getting somebody else to look
Speaker 1: at the decision and help you with it is actually
Speaker 1: going to be really helpful. So, as the amazing Daniel
Speaker 1: Conneman know about Laureate said to me, you should find
Speaker 1: someone who loves you but doesn't care about your feelings.
Speaker 1: Love that, just like, present the situation to somebody else
Speaker 1: in an objective way and have them help you. So, like,
Speaker 1: in the simplest sense, if you're thinking about changing jobs
Speaker 1: and you're really struggling with that for all of these
Speaker 1: reasons and the whole Katamari, right, like that, all of
Speaker 1: that debris that you're accumulating when you're thinking about changing
Speaker 1: careers after like you know, fifteen years and training in
Speaker 1: college and all of this stuff, have someone else help
Speaker 1: you with the decision. They'll probably see it more clearly
Speaker 1: than you do. So that's like trick number one. Trick
Speaker 1: number two is to set the circumstances under which you
Speaker 1: might quit in advance of you having accumulated any of
Speaker 1: that debris when the Katamari is just really tiny and
Speaker 1: it's not planet sized yet, right, So if we can
Speaker 1: do that when it's tiny and we haven't actually accumulated
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, then when it comes time to quitting,
Speaker 1: will be better at it. So let me give you
Speaker 1: a really good example of deciding in advance turnaround times.
Speaker 1: So remember our intrepid climbers on Everest who turned around
Speaker 1: at one pm. Now, notice those three climbers did, but
Speaker 1: a lot of other people did it. So this is
Speaker 1: not perfect. Right, It's not going to work one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the time. But if they didn't have those
Speaker 1: turnaround time, those three people would not have turned around.
Speaker 1: So it works some of the time, and some of
Speaker 1: the time last time I checked, is better than none
Speaker 1: of the time. So one of the things that we
Speaker 1: want to do when we go in, whether it's a
Speaker 1: relationship or a job or anything, is we want to
Speaker 1: sort of think before we enter into it, what are
Speaker 1: the things that could be occurring that would cause me
Speaker 1: to want to quit? Here another tactic, another strategy we
Speaker 1: can use to quit closer to when we should is
Speaker 1: to increase the flexibility and how we set goals. Right,
Speaker 1: we tend to think about the world in binaries. Right,
Speaker 1: you got to the top amount Everest, or you didn't
Speaker 1: get to the time. You completely fail exactly, even though
Speaker 1: you may have gotten seven eighths of the way there.
Speaker 1: And I think this is compounded by what's called the
Speaker 1: goal gradient effect, which says that we see increases in
Speaker 1: our motivational levels the closer we are to reaching our goal. Right,
Speaker 1: So in that seven eighth stretch of the mountain, right,
Speaker 1: our will, our desire is amplified in ways that can
Speaker 1: be very counterproductive. So can you talk a bit more
Speaker 1: about how listeners can set I guess what I would
Speaker 1: call more reasonable goals so that we don't find ourselves
Speaker 1: between a rock and a hard place. Yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: So there's this amazing work by Maurice Schweitzer who's at
Speaker 1: Wharton at University of Pennsylvania, who he's really talked about.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that we have this idea that
Speaker 1: goals are just generally good, like as a universal right.
Speaker 1: Like there's all this literature and goal setting as a
Speaker 1: motivational force, and he's coming at it from the other side.
Speaker 1: He's saying, there's a real downside to coals, which is
Speaker 1: exactly what you talked about, which is, when you have
Speaker 1: a goal, it does two things to you. One is
Speaker 1: it necessarily privileges certain values that you might have and
Speaker 1: de privileges other values that you might have. So super simple,
Speaker 1: if you're going for everest, you're privileging that goal, right,
Speaker 1: Like I want to get to Everest, but what are
Speaker 1: you deprivileging comfort? You're deprivileging time with your family because
Speaker 1: it takes months to do it away from your family, right,
Speaker 1: so and so forth. So you can see that whatever
Speaker 1: we're doing, you know, if we're spending time trying to
Speaker 1: do that last stretch of a project, we're deprivileging other
Speaker 1: goals that we might have, like spending time with our
Speaker 1: family or watching ted Lasso or cook taking a cooking
Speaker 1: class or whatever it is. So I think that we
Speaker 1: need to be very thoughtful about if when I think
Speaker 1: about this goal, first of all, what am I not
Speaker 1: seeing and what am I giving up that I'm following
Speaker 1: this goal? And then we also collide that with goals
Speaker 1: or also past fail So in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: it's better to have never tried to go up Everest
Speaker 1: at all than to have gotten within three hundred feet
Speaker 1: of the summit and turned around. So that's also a problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, So how do we solve for this? There's
Speaker 1: kind of two ways that we solve for it. So
Speaker 1: the first way that we can do is to remember
Speaker 1: the word unless. And this is really important and it
Speaker 1: goes back to this idea that I was talking about before,
Speaker 1: of think about these things in advance, right, So it's
Speaker 1: totally fine to say this is my goal unless right, so,
Speaker 1: my goal is to reach the summit unless there's really
Speaker 1: bad weather or it's past one pm. So this idea
Speaker 1: of this is my goal unless allows you to say
Speaker 1: I am set in this goal given what my information
Speaker 1: is right now. The second thing I think so I
Speaker 1: was speaking to Ken Kamler, who really amazing. He had
Speaker 1: been a doctor on Everest actually six different times, and
Speaker 1: he said something I think that was really profound. He said,
Speaker 1: people forget when they're climbing Everest that the goal of
Speaker 1: Everest is not to get to the summit. The goal
Speaker 1: is to get back down to the base of the mountain.
Speaker 1: And why I think that that's so powerful is that
Speaker 1: he's talking about a time horizon. Problem is that we
Speaker 1: get really wrapped up in the short term a loot
Speaker 1: when we ought to be thinking about the long term
Speaker 1: what is going to make us happy? Like if you're
Speaker 1: going to set a goal, you should think about a
Speaker 1: long term goal, like what is your goal over the
Speaker 1: course of your life, And in the shortest form that
Speaker 1: should be like to maximize your happiness. So as you're
Speaker 1: staying in an incredibly miserable career because you've put so
Speaker 1: much time into it and so much effort, and you
Speaker 1: don't want all of that to go to waste, and
Speaker 1: you don't want all the training to go to waste,
Speaker 1: and you're worried that what does it mean if you
Speaker 1: quit for who you are because you're an engineer or
Speaker 1: you're whatever, And then what will you be if you quit?
Speaker 1: And what will other people think about you? Won't they
Speaker 1: judge you for quitting? And all of that stuff that
Speaker 1: creates that planet sized katamuri that stops us from quitting.
Speaker 1: When you're caught up in that, all of that stuff
Speaker 1: is weighing so heavily on you, it makes it really
Speaker 1: really hard to leave. But you're miserable. And if you
Speaker 1: think about the long term goal of what in the end,
Speaker 1: as I look back on my life is going to
Speaker 1: have made me happy, I think that when you can
Speaker 1: get to that more long term thinking, you'll realize that
Speaker 1: grinding it out in a horrible career with a boss
Speaker 1: who is a nightmare, in a toxic work environment is
Speaker 1: not in the long run going to make you really happy.
Speaker 1: So for our listeners who are having anxiety around quitting. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering it's not a foolproof plant. Right. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there have been things that you may have regretted quitting
Speaker 1: at some point in your life. But the upside is
Speaker 1: that you probably learned something valuable about your own decision
Speaker 1: making process and how to improve that decision making process
Speaker 1: around quitting. So do you mind just sharing any regret
Speaker 1: you have about something you quit, but what you learn
Speaker 1: from that experience, you know. So the funny thing is
Speaker 1: so so I actually I actually regret quitting academics in
Speaker 1: the first place. Part of what made me not go
Speaker 1: back to academics earlier was because I thought that all
Speaker 1: the people that I had studied with would be mad
Speaker 1: at me, including my amazing advisor, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: she must you know. I just had it in my
Speaker 1: head that she must be so mad at me for quitting.
Speaker 1: And we reconnected ten years ago and she was so
Speaker 1: the opposite of mad at me. And that is a
Speaker 1: lesson that everybody needs to learn. It's like, whatever you
Speaker 1: think that other people are thinking about you, it's probably
Speaker 1: not what they're actually thinking. And I stopped myself from
Speaker 1: I deprived myself of a really important relationship in my
Speaker 1: life and the ability to actually be doing academics at
Speaker 1: the same time as I was doing something else that
Speaker 1: I loved in a much fuller way, because I got
Speaker 1: caught up thinking about how other people might judge me.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a lot of what stops us
Speaker 1: from quitting. And when I came back to academics, everybody
Speaker 1: welcomed me with open arms, and it was all living
Speaker 1: in my head, and so I would say, that's like
Speaker 1: the biggest lesson for me. I love that so much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, to your point, I think so much
Speaker 1: of your research and this upcoming book of yours is
Speaker 1: about how we rehabilitate quitting. And I think as a society,
Speaker 1: the way that we can change cultural norms around quitting
Speaker 1: is to recognize the compassion people will show us in
Speaker 1: the face of quitting and the lack of judgment that
Speaker 1: you know that we think is going to exist in
Speaker 1: our heads, as you mentioned, but doesn't necessarily need to
Speaker 1: be the case. And I think that when you approach
Speaker 1: things is an either or it becomes it puts a
Speaker 1: lot of extra pressure on you that you're closing the
Speaker 1: door to something and when I talk to people who,
Speaker 1: for example, are about our thinking about like changing careers
Speaker 1: and they're really having a hard time with it, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I always ask them is can
Speaker 1: you go back to the other career if this doesn't
Speaker 1: work out? And they'll normally say yes, there's no reason
Speaker 1: why they can't, and that seems to free them up
Speaker 1: to make the change. And I think that we have
Speaker 1: a tendency to think of decisions is last and final,
Speaker 1: and in poker, you definitely can't think about it that way.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that poker trained me to
Speaker 1: do is to realize decisions are not last and final,
Speaker 1: and you can always change course mid stream and you
Speaker 1: can often get back to choices that you rejected. And
Speaker 1: if we realize that more, I think that we would
Speaker 1: be more exploratory, and it would it would make our
Speaker 1: outcomes better. Actually, A Slight Change of Plans is created, written,
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Maya Shunker. The best part
Speaker 1: of creating this show is getting to collaborate with my
Speaker 1: formidable Slight Change family. This includes Tyler Green, our senior producer,
Speaker 1: Jen Guera, our senior editor, then Holiday, our sound engineer,
Speaker 1: Emily Rosteck our associate producer, and Neil Lavelle, our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Luis Skara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith
Speaker 1: helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Schunker and please remember to subscribe, share,
Speaker 1: and rate the show to help get the word out.
Speaker 1: See you next week now. I just want to set
Speaker 1: this stage for people, because this was in the nineties,
Speaker 1: poker was not on TV, and pretty much every discussion
Speaker 1: I had with people where they said what are you
Speaker 1: doing right now and I said, well, employed poker usually well,
Speaker 1: the first thing they would ask is is your husband rich? Which,
Speaker 1: you know, this was in the nineties, It's like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's super sexist. But then once they sort of figured
Speaker 1: out no, like I was actually supporting supporting us with
Speaker 1: this endeavor, they would usually ask if I had gone
Speaker 1: to gamblers. Anonymous