How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
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What is the main topic of this episode?
Hey there, Steven Dubner. Today, we're continuing our update of a series on failure we published a couple years ago called How to Succeed at Failing. In this episode, you will hear some personal stories from people who tried something new and failed. One of those people is Travis Thull, who thought what the world really needed was a new way to make instant ramen. Stay tuned to the end to hear how that worked out. We have updated all facts and figures as necessary. As always, thanks for listening. We've been making Freakonomics Radio for a while now, and there are two themes we have come back to again and again. The first is the value of persistence, of staying the course, not giving up. Our friend Angela Duckworth, a research psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote a book about this. It's called Grit, the Power of Passion and Perseverance. Here she is on another podcast we used to make together called No Stupid Questions.
I think the reason why there are all these aphorisms about not giving up and maybe why so much of my research has focused on the psychology of staying the course is that sometimes the road not taken, the track that you want to switch to, is appealing not because it is objectively better, but because it's objectively easier just in the short run.
What does Angela Duckworth say about persistence?
In other words, we give up because we're lazy or maybe impatient or intimidated or we're scared to fail. That makes sense, doesn't it? Duckworth is saying we might be better off by learning to tough it out. But the other theme we have often explored is pretty much the opposite of grit. Back in 2011, we made an episode called The Upside of Quitting. Here's my Freakonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt more recently.
It is a compliment to be called a quitter precisely because we live in a world where so many forces push us to persist far too long at failing endeavors.
Now, Levitt is an economist, not a psychologist, and his ideas about quitting come from basic economic concepts. One of them is called opportunity cost. That's the idea that every dollar or hour or brain cell you spend doing one thing is a dollar, an hour or a brain cell you can't spend on some other opportunity. There is another idea called the sunk cost fallacy.
What insights does Steve Levitt provide on quitting?
A sunk cost is a time or money or effort you've already spent. The fallacy is the belief that since you've already spent all those resources, you would be foolish to quit. But in reality, this is what economists argue, at least, those sunk costs are a distraction. And if what you're doing isn't likely to work out, you should stop throwing good money and time and effort after bad. Now, that makes sense too, doesn't it? But it does leave you with a dilemma. If you are in the middle of a project or a career, a relationship or a journey, and it's not going so well, how do you know whether the answer is grit or quit? What a great question. I don't think there's an easy answer to that. Amy Edmondson and Gary Klein have both built their research careers around the study of failure.
There's no objective criteria that are going to announce themselves to say go right, go left. So you're going to have to make a judgment.
It's a question of what kind of resources you have, what's your tolerance for pain, what are the alternatives. There's that kind of reluctance to admit that you've wasted all of these resources.
If you're a child learning to ride a bicycle, please don't quit. If you're someone who thinks this particular paper is the best thing ever published and every single journal rejects it, there does come a point where it's probably worth quitting.
The thing about quitting is that it is usually seen as an admission of failure. And so we are solemnly counseled to never quit. Consider Winston Churchill.
What challenges did Jill Hoffman face in her startup?
Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never. In nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
You'll run into that Churchill quote in a lot of the literature around grit. But context matters. Churchill gave that speech at his old school in October of 1941, when Britain was almost single-handedly trying to hold off Nazi Germany in World War II. The threat his country faced was literally existential. So you can see why quitting wasn't an attractive option.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic of this episode?
0:04–1:25
2
What lessons can we learn from failures?
1:25
3
What does Angela Duckworth say about persistence?
1:04–2:33
4
What insights does Steve Levitt provide on quitting?
2:33–4:17
5
How did Travis Thul attempt to innovate ramen cooking?
4:17
6
What challenges did Jill Hoffman face in her startup?
3:37–7:13
7
How do we define success and failure in entrepreneurship?
7:13
8
What can we learn from historical figures about grit and quitting?
6:57–1:03:29
Speakers
13 identifiedMore from Freakonomics Radio
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