Speaker 1: Pushkin. What I found out is that, like there's all
Speaker 1: these like great words for grit, including like heroism, right
Speaker 1: like steadfast, right like perseverance, Like grit is one of
Speaker 1: those words that's like a super super positive connotation, like sticktuitiveness,
Speaker 1: But when you look at quit, there's hardly any words
Speaker 1: that like are nice. And in fact, one of the
Speaker 1: synonyms for quit is the word coward. Annie Duke knows
Speaker 1: a lot about quitting. It's something she got really good
Speaker 1: at when she was a professional poker player on the
Speaker 1: world stage, and a successful one at that. We're talking
Speaker 1: over four million dollars in prize money. And what distinguishes
Speaker 1: great poker players from everybody else is that is mainly quitting.
Speaker 1: They quit a lot more. So they're just very good
Speaker 1: at cutting their losses, so they fold more hands to start.
Speaker 1: Once they've committed money to a pot, they fold a
Speaker 1: lot more. They change tactics or strategies like in the
Speaker 1: middle of things, and you have to be willing to
Speaker 1: do that. Annie's rallying cry is that we should quit
Speaker 1: a lot more. I know it's not something we hear often,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly why I've been so excited to have
Speaker 1: Annie on this show to teach us something that goes
Speaker 1: against common wisdom but can actually change our lives for
Speaker 1: the better. Annie's the best selling author of two books,
Speaker 1: Thinking in Bets and How to Decide. But today she's
Speaker 1: going to give us a sneak peek of her upcoming
Speaker 1: book on the science of Quitting. She'll show us how
Speaker 1: to get out of her own way and learn how
Speaker 1: to quit when we should. I'm Maya Shunker, and this
Speaker 1: is a slight change of plans, a show about who
Speaker 1: we are and who we become in the face of
Speaker 1: a big change. Poker wasn't always in the cards for Annie.
Speaker 1: She actually started out at the University of Pennsylvania studying
Speaker 1: cognitive science, specifically how we make decisions and times of uncertainty.
Speaker 1: I was fully intending to become a professor, which is
Speaker 1: kind of what you do with that kind of degree.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have a whole lot of practical application. And
Speaker 1: I actually had all of my what are called job
Speaker 1: talks lined up, and I've been struggling for a couple
Speaker 1: of months with a stomach problem, and I thought I'm
Speaker 1: just going to power through this, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that my body said no, you can't power through it.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the powering through it meant that I
Speaker 1: ended up in the hospital because I sort of wasn't
Speaker 1: taking care of this problem. And so I was in
Speaker 1: the hospital for a couple of weeks, very sick. So
Speaker 1: I 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 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 had 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 aaha, 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're perseverance, stick, tuitiveness, pluck,
Speaker 1: you're very plucky, right of metal. And then on the quitside,
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 Everest,
Speaker 1: and Rob Hall, who was this amazing alpinist and expedition leader,
Speaker 1: was one of those people who perished, and he is
Speaker 1: very much painted as a hero of that story. He
Speaker 1: had set turnaround times for every single day, and a
Speaker 1: turnaround time is just if you haven't gotten to point
Speaker 1: A by this time, you must turn around and go
Speaker 1: back to whatever camp you're coming from. The reason being
Speaker 1: that there's a very very dangerous part of that mountain
Speaker 1: called the South Ridge, and you do not want to
Speaker 1: descend the South Ridge in darkness. You'll fall like eight
Speaker 1: thousand feet into Nepal. And Rob Hall broke the turnaround time,
Speaker 1: so you know, and obviously it resulted in tragedy. And
Speaker 1: what's really interesting is that there were some people who
Speaker 1: followed the turnaround time who are also described in the book.
Speaker 1: They're also in the documentary, and nobody remembers their names,
Speaker 1: just so you know, it's such in 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: 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 time he was trying to help
Speaker 1: this guy get up who had previously not been able
Speaker 1: to get up, And do you mind just sharing that
Speaker 1: because I think that's such an emotionally evocative part of
Speaker 1: the story, which is like we can't quit a second time,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah? Yeah, So Rob Paul actually got to
Speaker 1: the top, but then he waited there for two hours
Speaker 1: for a guy named Doug Hanson. And the question is why, right,
Speaker 1: like why why he was already an hour passed the
Speaker 1: turnaround time. Doug Hanson clearly was well passed the turnaround
Speaker 1: time and was not nearly as skill the climber as
Speaker 1: Rob Hall was, so why didn't he turn around? And
Speaker 1: you have to rewind to the year before to understand
Speaker 1: kind of what the forces were that caused him to
Speaker 1: do that. So the year before was a very bad
Speaker 1: climbing year. So Rob Hall had tried to sum up
Speaker 1: with a group and Doug Hanson was in the group
Speaker 1: and they came back down, so they had abandoned their
Speaker 1: summit attempt. So now he convinces Doug Hanson to come
Speaker 1: back the next year because he says, I'll get you
Speaker 1: up the second time. And now we can see these
Speaker 1: forces like this is one of the big forces that
Speaker 1: causes us to not quit. And the phrase that I
Speaker 1: think is such a great phrase for us to really
Speaker 1: internalize it is called in the losses. So when we're
Speaker 1: in the losses, we have the desire to get those back,
Speaker 1: and we don't think about, well, what's the probability that
Speaker 1: I would actually be able to succeed? That's number one.
Speaker 1: We don't think about if I go for this, what
Speaker 1: are the opportunities I'm going to give up by going
Speaker 1: for it? Right, And that's true of anything like if
Speaker 1: you're in an monogamous relationship, you're obviously foregoing the opportunities
Speaker 1: to date other people. If you're in a job, you're
Speaker 1: foregoing the other opportunities to have other full time jobs.
Speaker 1: So this is a really actually big problem is that
Speaker 1: we tend not to see what we're giving up in
Speaker 1: terms of the other opportunities that might be available to
Speaker 1: us when we're on a particular path. So if you
Speaker 1: think about climbing Everest when we're thinking about trying to
Speaker 1: reach the summit, it causes this like myopia where we
Speaker 1: can't see, like other things, other opportunities that we might
Speaker 1: have in our life, like to climb other mountains, or
Speaker 1: to spend time with our families or whatever it else
Speaker 1: it is we might want to do that that pursuing
Speaker 1: that goal might actually make less likely for us to
Speaker 1: be able to do exactly. Okay, so Annie, I'd love
Speaker 1: to dig into some of the behavioral biases we face
Speaker 1: that interfere with our ability to quit when we ought to.
Speaker 1: Do you mind talking with listeners about escalation of commitment? Sure?
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of the game Katamari? So Katamari
Speaker 1: is a game where it's the weirdest game. You start
Speaker 1: with this little tiny speck of something and you roll
Speaker 1: it around and it starts to pick stuff up, and
Speaker 1: if it picks things up that are smaller than it is,
Speaker 1: it will pick it up and it will grow in size.
Speaker 1: If you try to pick something up that's bigger than
Speaker 1: the ball that you're rolling around, it will cause the
Speaker 1: ball to become smaller again. So the idea is you're
Speaker 1: trying to create a ball that's big enough that you
Speaker 1: can start picking up planets and it becomes like the
Speaker 1: size of a sun. So you start off with this
Speaker 1: little ball that's like picking up specs of dust and flies,
Speaker 1: and you're rolling it around like in a room, and
Speaker 1: you're like, then you start picking up bottles, you pick
Speaker 1: up the cat, you know, you pick up like the couch,
Speaker 1: and then you start picking up houses, and you can
Speaker 1: pick up mountains, and this thing just becomes bigger and
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger. And when I think about what happens
Speaker 1: to us that we don't quit, I think about Cotamuri
Speaker 1: because I think that it's such a great visual for
Speaker 1: understanding escalation of commitment. And it basically goes this way.
Speaker 1: You put time, resources, money, your own identity, right like,
Speaker 1: if you think about a career or a major, it
Speaker 1: becomes part of your identity. Who am I? I'm a doctor?
Speaker 1: Who am I? You know? I am an English major
Speaker 1: or I'm an engineer or whatever. Right, these things become
Speaker 1: part of our identity, and then we're putting time and
Speaker 1: effort and money and all of this stuff resources into
Speaker 1: this thing. Those The fact that we've dumped all of
Speaker 1: that into the decision to be on the path that
Speaker 1: we're on means that when we're faced with a decision
Speaker 1: about whether to quit or persevere, we're going to have
Speaker 1: a tendency to persevere because we've accumulated all of this
Speaker 1: debris like a catamari ball. But what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: the fact that that pushes us to persevere means that
Speaker 1: now we persevere, and now we put more time and
Speaker 1: more effort and more money and more resources and more
Speaker 1: of our identity into the thing that we're doing, which
Speaker 1: means that the next point that we're thinking about whether
Speaker 1: to quit or persevere, the ball is bigger. It's starting
Speaker 1: to become house sized, which makes us then more likely
Speaker 1: to persevere again, and so on and so forth, until
Speaker 1: you have like this katamari that's the size of a planet,
Speaker 1: and you kind of can't quit at that point. So
Speaker 1: now if we go back to Rob Hall, we can
Speaker 1: see the problem, right, because he's carrying a lot of
Speaker 1: that with him. He failed the year before. He's made
Speaker 1: a promise to Doug Hanson and that he's going to
Speaker 1: get him up, and that causes this myopia for him
Speaker 1: to sort of, I think, not to see the situation
Speaker 1: for what it is, which is one that you should quit,
Speaker 1: go back down the mountain, grab Doug Hanson and then
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you have a chance the next year.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering Annie if you can talk a bit about
Speaker 1: the role of regret and all this, because there is
Speaker 1: a regret asymmetry that's important to acknowledge here, which is,
Speaker 1: we tend to feel a lot of regret when we
Speaker 1: think about the idea of quitting, but somehow staying with
Speaker 1: the status quo does not fill us with those same
Speaker 1: feelings of regret. And so can you just talk to
Speaker 1: listeners a bit about regret asymmetry generally and how that
Speaker 1: 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,
Speaker 1: So let's say that I'm in a career or I'm
Speaker 1: in a relationship and I just stay the path. It
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like I've made a decision. If I move,
Speaker 1: If I quit my job and change, if I break
Speaker 1: up in the relationship, now it feels like I've actually
Speaker 1: made a decision. Now. The reason why this is an
Speaker 1: error is because the decision to stay in the job
Speaker 1: is also an active decision, and you should treat it
Speaker 1: the same way like our regret treats those two things differently. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's 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 plans,
Speaker 1: when Annie will share scientific strategies you can use to
Speaker 1: quit more often and sooner. One of the things that
Speaker 1: you said before that really struck me is around this
Speaker 1: concept of identity. And the reason is that so much
Speaker 1: 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 clearer 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 and most of the time
Speaker 1: you didn't mess up in the first place. Mike, If
Speaker 1: you put a sign on your lawn for a candidate
Speaker 1: and then the candidate gets involved in some scandal, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it was like it was a bad decision
Speaker 1: for you to vote for them in the first place
Speaker 1: because you didn't know. Yeah, And I love the thought
Speaker 1: experiment that you give, which I think elucidates this concept well,
Speaker 1: which is when you ask people what's the best decision
Speaker 1: you've ever made? What's the worst decision you've ever made?
Speaker 1: We tend to not focus on the process by which
Speaker 1: we made the decision or the inputs to that decision,
Speaker 1: but instead what the outcome was. So what you found
Speaker 1: 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 or by
Speaker 1: the 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: Kneman No About laureate said to me, you should find
Speaker 1: someone who loves you but doesn't care about your feelings.
Speaker 1: I love that. Just like, present the situation to somebody
Speaker 1: else 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 designing 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 of Mount Everest, or you
Speaker 1: didn't get to the time 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 is amplified in ways that
Speaker 1: can be very counterproductive. So can you talk a bit
Speaker 1: more about how listeners can set I guess what I
Speaker 1: would call more reasonable goals so that we don't find
Speaker 1: ourselves 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 on goal setting as a motive,
Speaker 1: national 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 with them three hundred
Speaker 1: feet of the summit and turned around. So that's also
Speaker 1: a problem. Yeah, all right, So how do we solve
Speaker 1: for this. There's kind of two ways that we solve
Speaker 1: for it. So the first way that we can do
Speaker 1: is to remember the word unless. And this is really
Speaker 1: important and it goes back to this idea that I
Speaker 1: was talking about before, of think about these things in advance. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's totally fine to say this is my goal
Speaker 1: unless right. So my goal is to reach the summit
Speaker 1: unless there's really bad weather or it's past one pm.
Speaker 1: So this idea of this is my goal unless allows
Speaker 1: you to say I am set in this goal given
Speaker 1: what my information is right now. The second thing I
Speaker 1: think so I was speaking to Ken Kamler, who it's
Speaker 1: really amazing. He had been a doctor on Everest actually
Speaker 1: six different times, and he said something I think that
Speaker 1: was really profound. He said, people forget when they're climbing
Speaker 1: Everest that the goal of Everest is not to get
Speaker 1: to the summit. The goal is to get back down
Speaker 1: to the base of the mountain. And why I think
Speaker 1: that that's so powerful is that he's talking about a
Speaker 1: time horizon. Problem is that we get really wrapped up
Speaker 1: in the short term a loot, when we ought to
Speaker 1: be thinking about the long term what is going to
Speaker 1: make us happy? Like if you're going to set a goal,
Speaker 1: you should think about a long term goal, like what
Speaker 1: is your goal over the course of your life, and
Speaker 1: in the shortest form that should be like to maximize
Speaker 1: your happiness. So as you're staying in an incredibly miserable
Speaker 1: career because you've put so much time into it and
Speaker 1: so much effort, and you don't want all of that
Speaker 1: to go to waste, and you don't want all the
Speaker 1: training to go to waste, and you're worried that what
Speaker 1: does it mean if you quit for who you are
Speaker 1: because you're an engineer or you're whatever, And then what
Speaker 1: will you be if you quit? And what will other
Speaker 1: people think about you? Won't they judge you for quitting?
Speaker 1: And all of that stuff that creates that planet sized
Speaker 1: katamari that stops us from quitting. When you're caught up
Speaker 1: in that all of that stuff is weighing so heavily
Speaker 1: on you, it makes it really really hard to leave.
Speaker 1: But you're miserable. And if you think about the long
Speaker 1: term goal of what in the end, as I look
Speaker 1: back on my life is going to have made me happy.
Speaker 1: I think that when you can get to that more
Speaker 1: long term thinking, you'll realize that grinding it out in
Speaker 1: a horrible career with a boss who is a nightmare
Speaker 1: in a toxic work environment is not in the long run,
Speaker 1: going to make you really happy. So, for our listeners
Speaker 1: who are anxiety around quitting, right, I'm wondering, it's not
Speaker 1: a full proof plant. Right. I'm sure there have been
Speaker 1: things that you may have regretted quitting at some point
Speaker 1: in your life. But the upside is that you probably
Speaker 1: learned something valuable about your own decision making process and
Speaker 1: how to improve that decision making process around quitting. So
Speaker 1: do you mind just sharing any regret you have about
Speaker 1: something you quit? But what you learn from that experience,
Speaker 1: you know? So the funny thing is so, so I
Speaker 1: actually I actually regret quitting academics in the first place.
Speaker 1: Part of what made me not go back to academics
Speaker 1: earlier was because I thought that all the people that
Speaker 1: I had studied with would be mad at me, including
Speaker 1: my amazing advisor and I thought, oh, she must you know,
Speaker 1: I just had it in my head that she must
Speaker 1: be so mad at me for quitting. And we reconnected
Speaker 1: ten years ago and she was so the opposite of
Speaker 1: mad at me. And that is a lesson that everybody
Speaker 1: needs to learn. It's like, whatever you think think that
Speaker 1: other people are thinking about you, it's probably not what
Speaker 1: they're actually thinking. And I stopped myself from I deprived
Speaker 1: myself of a really important relationship in my life and
Speaker 1: the ability to actually be doing academics at the same
Speaker 1: time as I was doing something else that I loved
Speaker 1: in a much fuller way because I got caught up
Speaker 1: thinking about how other people might judge me. And I
Speaker 1: think that's a lot of what stops us from quitting.
Speaker 1: And when I came back to academics, everybody welcomed me
Speaker 1: with open arms, and it was all living in my head.
Speaker 1: And so I would say, that's like the biggest lesson
Speaker 1: for me. I love that so much. Yeah, And you know,
Speaker 1: to your point, I think so much of your research
Speaker 1: and this upcoming book of yours is about how we
Speaker 1: rehabilitate quitting. And I think as a society, the way
Speaker 1: that we can change cultural norms around quitting is to
Speaker 1: recognize the compassion people will show us in the face
Speaker 1: of quitting and the lack of judgment that you know
Speaker 1: that we think is going to exist in our heads,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, but doesn't necessarily need to be the case.
Speaker 1: And I think that when you approach things is either
Speaker 1: or it becomes it puts a lot of extra pressure
Speaker 1: on you that you're closing the door to something. And
Speaker 1: when I talk to people who, for example, are about
Speaker 1: are thinking about like changing careers and they're really having
Speaker 1: a hard time with it, one of the things that
Speaker 1: I always ask them is can you go back to
Speaker 1: the other career if this doesn't work out? And they'll
Speaker 1: normally say yes, there's no reason why they can't, and
Speaker 1: that seems to free them up to make the change.
Speaker 1: And I think that we have a tendency to think
Speaker 1: of decisions is last and final, and in poker, you
Speaker 1: definitely can't think about it that way. That's that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that poker trained me to do, is
Speaker 1: to realize decisions are not last and final, and you
Speaker 1: can always change course mid stream, and you can often
Speaker 1: get back to choices that you rejected. And if we
Speaker 1: realize that more. I think that we would be more exploratory,
Speaker 1: and it would it would make our outcomes better. Actually
Speaker 1: join me next week when we'll hear from John Elder
Speaker 1: robeson he underwent experimental brain stimulation to deepen his emotional intelligence.
Speaker 1: And I'm walking through the mall and I'm just like
Speaker 1: looking around at the people and it was not beauty
Speaker 1: and sweetness and light. It was like fear and anxiety
Speaker 1: and worry and jealousy and all these things that they
Speaker 1: are all coming at me from a million different directions,
Speaker 1: and there was nothing I could do. A Slight Change
Speaker 1: of Plans is created written an executive produced by me
Speaker 1: Maya Shunker. The best part of creating this show is
Speaker 1: getting to collaborate with my formidable Slight Change family. This
Speaker 1: includes Tyler Green, our senior producer, Jen Guera, our senior editor,
Speaker 1: Then Holiday, our sound engineer, Emily Rosteck our associate producer,
Speaker 1: and Neil Lavelle, our executive producer. Louise Scara wrote our
Speaker 1: delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: so big thanks to everyone there and of course a
Speaker 1: very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a
Speaker 1: slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker
Speaker 1: and please remember to subscribe, share, and rate the show
Speaker 1: to help get the word out. See you next week now.
Speaker 1: I just want to set this stage for people, because
Speaker 1: this was in the nineties. Poker was not on TV,
Speaker 1: and pretty much every discussion I had with people where
Speaker 1: they said what are you doing right now and I said, well,
Speaker 1: employed poker usually well, the first thing that would ask
Speaker 1: is is your husband rich? Which you know this within
Speaker 1: the nineties, it's like, wow, that's super sexist. But then
Speaker 1: once they sort of figured out no, like I was
Speaker 1: actually supporting supporting us with this endeavor, they would usually
Speaker 1: ask if I had gone to gamblers Anonymous