This blogpost summarizes some of the main points from the book titled “Quit”, by Annie Duke

The Case for Quitting

In the first part of the book, the author builds up a case for “quitting”. Most of us associate “quitting” with “loser mentality”. Yes, in the Grit vs Quit debate, we often hear stories about people succeeding via Grit. However that does not mean we should belittle quitting as supported by numerous arguments in the book. It might be better for us to quit early and quit often so that we get a chance to explore the uncertain world around us. Why is it difficult to quit ? Well the book answers it in various sections but the first part talks about “loss aversion”, a cognitive bias well known in behavioral economics. The author gives a few examples where startup founders, surgeons, mountain climbers have taken the courage to quit very early on and have reaped subsequent success.

Some of the points that stood out in first part of the book are:

• When it is a close call between stick vs quit, research has shown that it is better to quit.
• Best professional players quit most of the times
• Quitting on time feels like we are quitting early
• Quitting gives the liberty to experiment, gather feedback on a diverse set of activities in this uncertain world
• Calibrating our mental model of quit vs stick is not so easy.
• We don’t want to quit because
  • We don’t want to be plagued by “What-ifs” ?
  • We do not have the complete information before we can quit with certainty.
  • When we are losing , we tend to be risk seekers. When we are gaining, we tend to be risk averse. This is why retail investors don’t make consistent gains over long holding periods

In the Losses

The second part of the book is about various behaviors one comes across in loss situations. The author highlights two cognitive biases - escalation of commitment and sunk cost effect with a wide range of examples. The key idea of escalation of commitment is that we double down on risk when we should be exactly avoiding and walking away in certain situations. The key idea behind sunk cost fallacy is that instead of looking at expected value based on future outcomes, we tend to color our decisions based on what has already gone in to the project. Even though the decision might have negative expected value, we continue to make bad decisions because of the sunk cost.

Some of the points that stood out in second part of the book are:

• Monkeys and Pedestal: I loved this analogy as this is applicable to so many different aspects of personal and professional life. Instead of focusing on difficult issues, we tend to focus on routine, mundane, easy things that can be done, but are ultimately inconsequential to the outcome. Wonderful analogy that can be applied in several situations such as
  • May be you are able to build pedestals in your workplace, day after day while not spending or thinking about the monkey. Finding something to do that can be done by several others and not focusing on things that are hard, is a tendency that I have fallen in to lately. It is a good reminder to get out this mindset and instead focus on the monkey
  • In playing an instrument, I can related to my behavior. There are many times when I tend to focus on playing or practicing known aspects in various raagas. Instead, I should be focusing on the tough parts and practice in tough parts of a raaga.
• Kill criterion that includes a state and date - Don’t recall having such a mindset for any of my decisions so far. Looks like a very useful hack
• Knowing about biases is not enough. Actually getting in to the trenches and working through the biases is the only way to internalize
• Katamari Damacy video game analogy to remind ourselves of what crap we are picking up as we tend to keep going on in fruitless ventures

Identity and Other Impediments

The third part of the book talks about our tendency to get wedded to the work we are doing, the things we own, the things we build, that ultimately makes it difficult to quit. Cognitive biases such as endowment effect, status quo bias and IKEA effect are explored with various examples.

Some of the points that stood out in third part of the book are:

• Ants analogy: A few ants are forever exploring the environment even though there is a food supply for the ant colony. Fantastic analogy knowing that highlights the need for constant exploration in our lives
• Need to have a quitting coach who can help us define the kill criteria if we are ourselves not having one, for every decision we take
• Life is too short mantra as a pressing need to quit, have kill criteria, have pre-commitment contracts.
• We don’t have to place a lot of focus on the need to have internal consistency, need for external validation. Quitting becomes harder when one considers these factors

Opportunity Cost

The fourth part of the book talks about the need to think about opportunity cost in a forward looking manner, in almost every aspect of our decision making. I loved this part of the book mainly because it resonated with my own life in some sense. Some of the points that stood out in the fourth part of the book are

• Examples of Maya Shankar, Annie Duke and London Underground commuters who had a better life once life forced them to quit their paths
• Ants exploiting watermelon analogy - Explore vs. Exploit
• Goals that are pass or fail in nature makes us myopic as we fail to look at the environment when we are marching towards a goal
• Importance of having flexible goals that have intermediate markers, that have kill criteria with UNLESS in it
• One day of rest mantra by a basketball coach. It made wonders to the team as the team members had a chance to explore other things in life. Exploring other aspects made them play basket ball better.

Takeaway

The analogies and examples mentioned in the book make it a very interesting read. If not anything, this book will make you think about quitting some aspects of your life (where you are sticking to them because of cognitive biases).