Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke. 

3/5 rating. 247 pages.

Book #5 of 2024. Finished January 28, 2024.

This book focuses on Annie’s idea: “Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.”

We give a disproportionate amount of respect to those that persevere and have grit to keep working through hard times on some project, relationship, problem, or anything else in life. This is certainly warranted as without the willingness to work hard and dig in, none of us will probably amount to anything near our optimal selves. The issue is that we are hardwired to be loss-averse and to feel losses much harder than gains. This means that we far too often continue on down paths that are not right for us much too far.

What is often forgotten is how many things we must quit in order to give ourselves fully to the things that truly matter. This can be the difference between being absolutely overwhelmed by the limitless possibilities afforded each of us, and choosing the few aspects of our lives that we can give our entire heart and mind to. We only have a limited amount of bandwidth, attention, and hours to give. And using up any of these on something that is not going to help us reach our goals is a travesty as it is taking away from us giving our all to the next project, the next experiment, the next stage in life.

This book had a lot of good ideas, but just wasn’t a page-turner. It was useful, as I have a ton of things planned for this year and I want to make sure I focus on the things that are going to be most fruitful long-term. Hopefully now I’ll have a better idea of when the proper time to quit any of my plans that aren’t fruitful is.

Quotes:

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.” 

“Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.”

“Could you turn around without knowing for sure whether you could have made it, after everything you put yourself through and all you’ve asked of others? How much of a burden would it be having to live with “What if I hadn’t quit?” for the rest of your life? Most people in that situation could not do it. Hutchison, Taske, and Kasischke did, but a much larger number—those who died that day and many others who barely escaped death—were unable to resist the call to persevere.”

“If you feel like you’ve got a close call between quitting and persevering, it’s likely that quitting is the better choice.”

“Persevering in the face of tall odds, as Ali or Rob Hall did, is not exceptional. Quitting a losing course of action before certain failure is.”

“‘Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.’ Succeeding unconventionally carries with it the risk of experiencing failure as a result of veering from the status quo.”

“[D]eciding not to change is itself a decision.”

“Life’s too short.”

“What is true for grit is true for optimism. Optimism gets you to stick to things that are worthwhile. But optimism also gets you to stick to things that are no longer worthwhile. And life’s too short to do that.”

“As you already know, grit is good for getting you to stick to hard things that are worthwhile, but grit also gets you to stick to hard things that are no longer worthwhile.”

“Goals work, but sometimes they work to the point where they make us ignore clear signs that the goal is not worth continuing to pursue.”

“The way we naturally think about failure is to have stopped something short of the goal, as in failing to make it to the finish line. But if you’re continuing to pursue something that’s no longer worth pursuing, isn’t that a failure? How do we start to redefine that and think about failure as failing to follow a good decision process?”

“But lots of hard things are not worth pursuing and the ability to walk away when it’s right is also a skill worth developing.”

#quit #whentowalkaway #optimaldecisions #books #bookreviews

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