Annie Duke

Like we all know that grit is a sign of character and we should stick it out and show our metal, right?

We should be courageous and keep going.

But there's so much science that shows that we don't quit things soon enough.

And I think that one of the ways that I can get at that, Mike, is like, think about some big decisions that you've made where you did finally quit something.

As you think about that set of decisions, would you say that for the most part, after you finally quit, you think, oh, I should have done that a lot earlier?

Or for the most part, do you think, woo, I did that too soon?

Right.

And I think that that's true for most people is that we feel like, oh, I wish I had done that earlier.

And I think the problem is that kind of to the point of what we were talking about before about wanting to get to that certainty before you're willing to make a decision.

is that once we start things, we don't want to quit unless we're certain that we have to.

Because it does feel like such a failure to us to actually walk away from something, right?

That we don't want to walk away from it unless we know that we didn't have any other choice.

But if we didn't have any other choice, that's way past the point that you should have walked away.

So I think that people need to get better at saying like, look, when I make a decision to start something,

I'm giving it my best guess as to whether I'm going to like this job, for example.

But then after I've started the job, there's all sorts of signals that could happen that would show me that this isn't the job for me.

My boss could be toxic, or the hours might not be good, or people are emailing me constantly on Sunday, and that's not really what I wanted in a job, and I didn't think that that was going to be the case.

But now that I've discovered it, it's OK for me to leave.

Thanks, Mike.

This has been super fun.