Quitting is sometimes the right decision. Here's how to know when 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. This episode was originally published on Aug. 18, 2025. Show notes: Read a comic version of this episode here https://www.npr.org/2025/09/12/nx-s1-5403630/signs-its-time-to-quit. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit https://www.instagram.com/nprlifekit/?hl=en Sign up for our newsletter here. https://www.npr.org/newsletter/life-kit Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening and convenient playlists of popular help topics like personal finance, getting healthy, and more. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:24Marielle 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.

• 0:37Marielle Segarra?

  Winners never quit, and quitters never win. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

• 0:46Speaker 02

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

• 0:49Marielle 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."

• 1:01Speaker 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.

• 1:07Marielle 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.

• 1:38Speaker 03

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

• 1:46Marielle Segarra?

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

• 1:51Speaker 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.

• 2:03Marielle 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.

• 2:36Marielle Segarra?

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• 3:41Marielle Segarra?

  When we were in the studio, Annie Duke, the cognitive psychologist, posed a question to me. Feel free to play along here.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  I want you to imagine, what's a band? Tell me a band that you like.

• 3:55Marielle Segarra?

  I said Olivia Dean, the neo-soul singer.

• 4:00Marielle 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.

• 4:13Speaker 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?

• 4:39Marielle Segarra?

  No.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:40Marielle 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.

• 4:49Speaker 02

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

• 4:51Marielle Segarra?

  No, I'd probably consider it more.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:54Marielle Segarra?

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

• 5:00Speaker 02

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

• 5:02Marielle Segarra?

  Right.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  But you already spent it.

• 5:05Marielle 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.

• 5:54Marielle 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.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Adults always feel like they quit too late, and what that means is that you're quitting too late.

• 6:11Marielle Segarra?

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

• 6:44Speaker 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.

• 7:03Marielle 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.

• 7:28Marielle 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, @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 9-to-5 job and started his own business. Now, Colin had never wanted to be a business owner. His dad was an entrepreneur, owned a plumbing business, and it was not easy.

• 8:02Speaker 07

  We got evicted, and we had all these other financial troubles, and I, that's what 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 white-collar.

• 8:18Marielle Segarra?

  But then last year, Colin lost his job, which kind of poked a hole in his logic that a 9-to-5 gig was a guarantee of financial stability. And at that moment, he also realized he was pursuing this career path for another reason.

• 8:31Speaker 07

  I was chasing a certain idea of how I wanted to be perceived, and I wanted to be perceived as successful, and 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.

• 9:04Marielle 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?

• 9:14Speaker 07

  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.

• 9:35Marielle 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.

• 9:46Speaker 07

  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.

• 10:06Marielle Segarra?

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

• 10:16Marielle 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.

• 10:30Speaker 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.

• 10:42Marielle 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.

• 10:50Speaker 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.

• 11:07Marielle 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.

• 11:15Speaker 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.

• 11:32Marielle 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.

• 11:53Speaker 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?

• 12:12Marielle 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?

• 12:24Speaker 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?

• 12:33Marielle 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?

• 12:47Speaker 07

  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.

• 12:58Marielle Segarra?

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

• 13:05Speaker 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.

• 13:22Marielle Segarra?

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

• 13:27Speaker 07

  It's like making way for new growth. If you think about like, you know, a garden or maybe you're played 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 the 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.

• 13:54Marielle Segarra?

  We'll have more Life Kit after the break.

• 14:00Speaker 04

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• 14:51Marielle 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?

• 15:11Speaker 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.

• 15:23Marielle 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.

• 15:37Speaker 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.

• 15:49Marielle Segarra?

  So the advice here? Recruit other people to help you. Mentors, peers, friends.

• 15:55Speaker 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.

• 16:06Marielle 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.

• 16:16Speaker 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.

• 16:26Marielle 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.

• 16:44Speaker 07

  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.

• 17:02Marielle Segarra?

  OK, time for a recap.

• 17:05Marielle 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.

• 17:49Marielle 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 people you trust for their opinion.

• 18:09Marielle Segarra?

  One more tip from Annie Duke before we go. From now on, when you set goals, make a list of unlesses.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  So what that means is that I'm going to go for this thing unless?

• 18:20Marielle Segarra?

  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.

• 18:40Marielle Segarra?

  That's our show. Before we head out, if you found something useful in today's episode, there's probably somebody else in your life who would too. Why not hit that share button and send them this episode now?

• 18:53Marielle Segarra?

  This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our digital editor is Malika Gharib and our visuals editor is CJ Riegelon. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagel, Claire Marie Schneider, Lennon Sherburne, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Robert Rodriguez. I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.

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