Quitting isn't always bad. How to know when it's time to walk away

Quitting is often associated with failure. But choosing to walk away from a goal can help you save time, identify what you truly want and create space for other pursuits. This episode, how to evaluate your goal, figure out its cost and know when it's time to throw in the towel. For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekitSign up for our newsletter here. Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] the show and listen to it sponsor-free by signing up for Life Kit+ at plus.npr.org/lifekitLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:14Marielle Segarra?

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• 0:45Marielle Segarra?

  You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Marielle. Raise your hand if you've heard one of these sayings. Don't be a quitter. Winners never quit, and quitters never win. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  There's all this stuff around quitting that makes it seem cowardly.

• 1:11Marielle Segarra?

  This is Annie Duke, a cognitive psychologist, a decision strategist, and a former professional poker player. She wrote a book called Quit, and she says, "We tend to think about quitting as a failure."

• 1:22Speaker 02

  Even though it's not failure, if you're doing it in a situation where you ought to be walking away, that's a success.

• 1:28Marielle Segarra?

  Because you've stopped spinning your wheels or wasting your time, and you get to go do other things that you'll enjoy more or that bring more value to your life. But how do you know when it's one of those situations? When it is time to walk away? Or, as Angela Duckworth puts it, "When to grit and when to quit." Angela is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. She pioneered academic research on grit, which she defines as "a mix of passion and perseverance that allows people to achieve their long-term goals."

• 1:59Speaker 03

  It has to be that sometimes it is better to quit. It's not that 100% of the time, we should persist, right?

• 2:07Marielle Segarra?

  Angela knows a mountain climber who has scaled some of the highest peaks in the world.

• 2:12Speaker 03

  And one of the things that he and other people like him have said is that one of the most important things to know as a mountaineer is when you should turn back from the summit before you've reached it.

• 2:24Marielle Segarra?

  On this episode of Life Kit, how to know when to quit something. That could be a career path, your pursuit of a particular goal, a relationship. It could be lots of things. We're going to give you the tools to evaluate your goals and figure out what they're costing you and whether it's worth persisting.

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• 4:14Marielle Segarra?

  When we were in the studio, Annie Duke, the cognitive psychologist, posed a question to me. Feel free to play along here. I want you to imagine. What's a band? Tell me a band that you like.

• 4:28Marielle Segarra?

  I said Olivia Dean, the neo-soul singer.

• 4:33Marielle Segarra?

  So Annie tells me, imagine Olivia Dean is coming to town. She's doing an outdoor concert in Central Park. Do I want to go? Yeah. But then the day of the concert, I actually don't have a ticket yet, and there's a freak weather event.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  And it's like sleeting, inhaling, icy rain, freezing cold. It's like 15 degrees out, it's so cold. And there's no cover, like they're not moving inside, it's still going to be outside. And I call you up and I'm like, hey, I know you like Olivia Dean. I bought a ticket to go to this concert. I don't want to go because of the weather, but do you want my free ticket?

• 5:12Marielle Segarra?

  No.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 5:13Marielle Segarra?

  Now she says, imagine, same situation. Olivia Dean is coming to town and doing an outdoor concert, but I did buy a ticket and it cost me 500 bucks.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Are you still so sure that you're not going?

• 5:24Marielle Segarra?

  No, I'd probably consider it more.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:27Marielle Segarra?

  I'd probably be like, oh, well, I could wear like a snowsuit, I guess. Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Because you don't want to waste the $500.

• 5:35Marielle Segarra?

  Right.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  But you already spent it.

• 5:38Marielle Segarra?

  The point is, I said I didn't want to go to the concert when it was free because I'd made the calculation that it wasn't worth the misery of standing in that weather. In the second scenario, the fact that I'd already spent $500 shouldn't have changed that. But our brains are funny that way. By the way, this is a concept known in economics as the sunk cost fallacy. The fallacy is thinking you should stick with something just because you've already put a lot of money or time or effort into it. Stated another way, and I'm pretty sure I saw this on a quote card on social media, if you dig a hole in the wrong place, digging deeper is not going to help. So how do we know if we're digging in the right place? Takeaway one, the fact that you're seriously thinking about quitting is a sign in itself.

• 6:27Marielle Segarra?

  Annie has talked to a lot of people about quitting, and she hasn't met many adults who say they quit something too soon. Usually, they say they stuck around with something or someone far past that situation's expiration date. Adults always feel like they quit too late, and what that means is that you're quitting too late. Again, our culture defines quitting as a failure, which means we're biased against it. So Annie says when the thought of quitting comes into your mind, especially repeatedly, you should take that thought seriously and set a deadline. Let's say your goal is to have a second child. You've had trouble conceiving, so you tried IVF and vitro fertilization. You've gone through several rounds. Your body hurts. You're mentally and emotionally exhausted, and you're too tired to spend quality time with the kid you have.

• 7:12Marielle Segarra?

  You don't know if you should keep going. She says start with that deadline.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  It could be, I'm OK trying for another year. It could be, I'm OK investing this much more money in this. It could be, I'm OK giving it two more cycles or three more cycles. But you have to have a deadline, and you have to figure out what that deadline is for you.

• 7:36Marielle Segarra?

  A deadline gives you time to come up with a plan and build an off-ramp if you need it. For instance, if you want to quit your job but can't afford to, you can start pursuing other work or other careers while you're in your current position. A deadline also gives you a chance to ask yourself some important questions. And that's takeaway two. Interrogate your goal. Put it under the microscope.

• 8:01Marielle Segarra?

  One of the questions you'll want to ask yourself is, why do I want this thing? Colin Rocker is the founder of For the First, a meetup club for first-generation professionals. He also started a career education platform at CareerColin that teaches those professionals how to navigate a workplace that wasn't created with them in mind. And he quit something about a year ago. He quit the pursuit of a corporate nine to five job and started his own business. Now, Colin had never wanted to be a business owner. His dad was an entrepreneur. He owned a plumbing business and it was not easy.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  We got evicted and we had all these other financial troubles. And I, that's what I, I associated a lot of pain with running your own business, which wasn't exactly unfounded, but it drove me into pursue a more traditional career for myself that was corporate and more, and more white collar.

• 8:51Marielle Segarra?

  But then last year, Colin lost his job, which kind of poked a hole in his logic that a nine to five gig was a guarantee of financial stability. And at that moment, he also realized he was pursuing this career path for another reason.

• 9:04Speaker 05

  I was chasing a certain idea of how I wanted to be perceived. And I wanted to be perceived as successful. I wanted to be perceived as somewhat, you know, powerful and influential, right? In some ways. And I thought that if I could stack the right mix of titles and salaries and company names on a LinkedIn profile or on a resume, I would somehow not even really feel whole, but just be perceived as someone who had gone out and made something for themselves. And I wanted that perception of significance.

• 9:37Marielle Segarra?

  So Colin's advice for you is to think about why you're on a particular path. Be honest with yourself and ask, are you the same person who set this goal?

• 9:47Speaker 05

  A lot of times people go about certain things, whether this is joining a sports team, declaring a certain major, starting a relationship, starting a job or career path. And they get further down the line and the original intention, for whatever reason, has now completely fallen to the wayside. And they're doing something more out of inertia than intention.

• 10:08Marielle Segarra?

  Another question to ask yourself is who are you afraid of disappointing if you quit this thing? That could be a parent or a coach, a professor, or a group of friends, a partner.

• 10:19Speaker 05

  People come to me sometimes for career advice, right? Which I'm always happy to give. And they explain this whole situation where they're clearly, clearly, clearly not passionate about what they're doing for work. They don't want to continue doing it, but they feel drawn to it or they feel like they have to do it because of someone else's perception of them or what it means to someone else.

• 10:39Marielle Segarra?

  On that note, another important question when you're thinking about quitting something is how passionate am I about this goal?

• 10:49Marielle Segarra?

  Angela Duckworth, who studies grit, defines it as the combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals. And she says the passion part is really important. Because yeah, if you want to reach a goal, you've got to be deliberate. You've got to put in the reps.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  But what are you putting the reps in about? I mean, what are you practicing? It should be something that grabs your attention without you're forcing your attention to that object.

• 11:15Marielle Segarra?

  In her classes, Angela will tell students, grit is about working hard. But before you get working hard, I want you to learn to choose easy.

• 11:23Speaker 03

  I want you to choose to do something with your life, starting today, that spontaneously grabs your attention, puts you into the flow state. I want you to do something where you feel this resonance with like who you are when you are at your best, your personal values.

• 11:40Marielle Segarra?

  If you can help it, don't choose a career, or a hobby, or a lifestyle, or a path, where you're going to be hating every moment.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Choose things where you're like, what? I get to, I get to think about this? I get to talk about this? I get to hang out with people who want to do this? And by the way, when I do this, I really feel in some moral way that this is, this is my best self that I can give to the world.

• 12:05Marielle Segarra?

  OK, one more question to ask yourself as you decide whether to quit something. Is this goal realistic? Takeaway three is to gather the data about your goal. Depending on the goal, Annie Duke says, there are different ways to gather data and figure out your individual chance of success. Let's say you're 15 and you want to be a pro skateboarder.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  I can actually look and say, when I look at people who have made the pros, where were they at 15? Or where were they after the amount of practice and coaching and so on and so forth that we have actually put into this up to this point?

• 12:45Marielle Segarra?

  Or if we take the IVF example, your fertility clinic could provide stats on how likely success is at your age and given your situation. Then you can decide for yourself, what is my appetite for risk?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Am I OK if I have a 10% chance? Am I only OK if I have a 50% chance? Am I only OK if I have an 80% chance?

• 13:06Marielle Segarra?

  You also want to figure out what this goal is costing you. How much money are you spending in pursuit of this dream or this path? Is it affecting your health? Are you miserable? Are you unable to sleep?

• 13:20Speaker 05

  I can't tell you the amount of times I've shown up to jobs that I ended up leaving, where I could feel the tightness in my chest. I've lost hair, I've grown gray hairs.

• 13:31Marielle Segarra?

  Also, think about what else you could be doing with your time. This is another concept from economics called opportunity cost.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  It's always a question of like, could I be doing something better other than applying to vet school again, you know, going through another IVF cycle, trying to get that interview or that internship? It's invisible. It's like the thing that you're not doing. So it's not the center of your attention.

• 13:55Marielle Segarra?

  So think about what quitting could free you up to do. And really allow yourself to daydream.

• 14:00Speaker 05

  It's like making way for new growth. If you think about like, you know, a garden or maybe your plate at a buffet, right? It's like if you have too much stuff going on, there's no room for anything new to come into your life. And so I found that when I created that space, it allowed other things to come into my life, like my role now as a father, even starting with community and all these other beautiful things I've been able to do. There just wasn't a lot of space for that in the life I was living.

• 14:26Marielle Segarra?

  OK, takeaway four. If you're thinking about quitting something and you're still stuck, ask a couple people you trust. Should I keep doing this? Annie says we've all been in situations where we look at someone else. You know, they're in a relationship or they're in a job or they're pursuing something and we're thinking, what are you doing?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  They're coming and complaining to you and like, I hate my partner and I want to leave. And then you see them six months later and you're like, so how's that going? And they haven't done anything about it. And you're like, man, they should really just quit.

• 14:58Marielle Segarra?

  The reason we can be so level-headed in these situations, Annie says, is that we don't carry around all the baggage they do. We're not carrying around their sunk costs all the time they've invested in this relationship or career path or whatever else.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  So you can see that situation much more clearly than they can. So guess what? Other people can see your situation more clearly than you can.

• 15:24Marielle Segarra?

  So the advice here, recruit other people to help you. Mentors, peers, friends. Angela is currently writing her second book. And ironically, she has really wanted to quit at times. So she asked her husband and a couple of close friends, "Should I?" They say, "No, keep going." But she says if everybody's telling you the opposite...

• 15:45Speaker 03

  When there is a chorus of people who care about you and know you, who say, "I think you should give up and do something more valuable with your time." You know, "I think you should listen."

• 15:56Marielle Segarra?

  When you talk to these trusted advisors, Annie says, "Make sure you tell them, 'Be honest with me. Tell me what I need to hear, not what you think I want to hear.'"

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Because I want to know the truth for myself. Because I care about, you know, if you're 22, I care about 32-year-old me. I don't care about whether you think you're hurting my feelings right now.

• 16:16Marielle Segarra?

  So, big picture here. We're not saying you should quit that thing. That only you can decide. But we would love it if you gave yourself permission to quit things in general, when that's the right choice for you, and to make space for whatever's next. Give yourself the opportunity to bloom.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  It felt, for me, like a smaller existence before I'd quit this identity that wasn't necessarily serving me in every way it could. But I feel like I'm a much more filled-up person. And I feel like I'm showing up better for my friends. I'm showing up better for my family and in my work because I feel more fulfilled by it.

• 16:52Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, time for a recap.

• 16:55Marielle Segarra?

  Takeaway one, given our culture's bias against quitting and the way people act like quitting equals failure, the fact that you're still thinking about it is something to take seriously. You may not be ready to quit today, but set yourself a deadline to make the decision. Takeaway two, interrogate your current path or goal. Ask questions like, "Why do I want to do this thing?" Or, "Why am I doing this? Am I the same person who set this goal? Am I just sticking with this because I'm afraid to disappoint my parents or my partner or someone else? Am I passionate about this goal? And is this goal realistic?" Takeaway three, gather the data. Figure out your likelihood of success and whether you're comfortable with that.

• 17:39Marielle Segarra?

  Also, think about what pursuing this goal is costing you in terms of time, money, stress, and opportunity cost. That's all the stuff you're not doing because you are doing this. And takeaway four, if you're thinking about quitting something and you're still stuck, ask a couple of people you trust for their opinion.

• 17:59Marielle Segarra?

  One more tip from Annie Duke before we go. From now on, when you set goals, make a list of unlesses. So what that means is that I'm going to go for this thing unless. I'm going to try to be a pro skateboarder unless I keep getting seriously injured. I'm going to try to have another kid this year unless I lose my job. I'm going to join the circus unless I don't love it anymore. Think of this like a little contract with yourself that could make it easier to quit when the moment is right.

• 18:30Marielle Segarra?

  For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We've got one on how to focus your attention and another on how to make resolutions you will keep. You can find those at npr.org/lifekit. And if you love Life Kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/lifekitnewsletter. Also, if you have episode ideas or you just want to say something nice to us, email us at [email protected]. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Grieve. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagel, Claire Marie Schneider, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Robert Rodriguez.

• 19:15Marielle Segarra?

  I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.