What’s Really Controlling Your Money? & When to Quit

Most people think they’re good drivers. But there’s one simple thing you can do—or not do—that has a surprisingly big impact on how well you drive. It takes almost no effort, yet skipping it can quietly increase your chances of making mistakes behind the wheel. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25890276/ Your financial life may feel like a series of personal choices—what you earn, spend, and save. But many of those decisions are shaped by forces you don’t always see. Technology, algorithms, credit systems, and even the way prices are presented can subtly influence how you think about money and what you do with it. Alex Mayyasi, reporter for the podcast Planet Money (https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money) and author of Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (https://amzn.to/4s4H9DO), explains how these hidden forces work—and how becoming aware of them can help you make smarter financial decisions. Quitting has a bad reputation. We’re taught to stick it out, push through, and never give up. But sometimes quitting is exactly the right move. The real challenge is knowing the difference between perseverance and persistence that no longer serves you. Jeffrey Lockwood, professor at the University of Wyoming and author of The Good Quit: Mastering the Fine Art of Giving Up (https://amzn.to/48oBEsG), explores how to recognize when it’s time to walk away—and how making the right decision at the right time can actually move your life forward. An eye that suddenly starts twitching can feel strange and a little unsettling. It often comes out of nowhere and can linger longer than you’d like. But what’s actually causing it—and is it something you should worry about? https://www.mayoclinic.org/symptoms/eye-twitching/basics/causes/sym-20050838 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS QUINCE: Refresh your wardrobe with Quince! Go to ⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: See less carts go abandoned with Shopify and their Shop Pay button! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ PLANET VISIONARIES : We love the Planet Visionaries podcast! In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you are listening to this podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, how a quick trip to the kitchen can help you be a better driver. Then, hidden factors that affect your money: technology, algorithms, even credit cards.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  There is this strange economics going on where the banks, they want you to use their credit cards so they can charge these fees. But then, stores have to pay those fees. So what do stores do? They raise their prices. So now we're paying higher prices because of credit card fees.

• 0:30Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why does your eye sometimes just start twitching? And quitting anything, a job, a relationship. There are bad ways to quit and good ways to quit.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  And really, I guess what it comes down to is a wiser, good quit is one that in which an individual quits for the right reasons, at the right time and in the right way. And any one of those, we can screw up.

• 0:56Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 1:01Mike Carruthers?

  Now here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping? Especially with the holidays coming. Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in Shop Cash. But not to one person. A thousand people will each win $1,000 in Shop Cash. And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place. So instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for,

• 1:46Mike Carruthers?

  and track your orders all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with 1,000 chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 2:38Mike Carruthers?

  So drinking alcohol and driving is a horrible idea, but drinking water and driving is a spectacular idea. I'm Mike Carruthers, and that is what we're going to start with today on this episode of Something You Should Know. If you want to be the best driver you can be, drink some water first. Research shows that even mild dehydration, the kind you might have after a busy day, can impair your concentration, slow your reaction time, and increase fatigue. In one study, dehydrated drivers made significantly more errors during a long, monotonous drive. And it doesn't take much.

• 3:21Mike Carruthers?

  Losing just 1% to 2% of your body's water can start to affect how well your brain functions, which means something as simple as not drinking enough water can quietly make it harder to focus, think clearly, and stay alert. So before you reach for caffeine or try to push through the mental fog, you might just try a glass of water. And that is something you should know. A lot of what determines how much money you have happens in ways you never see. It's not just how hard you work or how much money you earn.

• 4:02Mike Carruthers?

  It's the economy, technology, the credit system, even algorithms, forces that quietly shape your financial life behind the scenes. So why does money seem to flow more easily to some people than others? And how much control do you really have over your money? My guest has spent years uncovering the hidden forces that influence your wallet and your bank account. Alex Mayyasi is a reporter for the podcast Planet Money, which I've recommended many times, and he's the author of a book called Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life. Hey Alex, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Hi Mike, it's really nice to be here.

• 4:46Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I have so many questions. There's so many things to talk about. I want to jump right in. And let's start with the superstar effect. Can you explain what that is and why it's important and how it affects money?

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the superstar effect is this idea that in certain fields, technology has really changed the range of outcomes. Did you grow up watching I Love Lucy?

• 5:12Mike Carruthers?

  I did.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  So you probably know who Desi Arnaz is then?

• 5:16Mike Carruthers?

  He is Ricky Ricardo.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Right, so Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball are famous for having created the beloved sitcom, I Love Lucy. But in another way, what they did, and especially what Desi figured out, he really like created the business model of television. He found it, he figured out how to make television really lucrative. Because TV was once this thing, it was almost like radio and then they they put a camera on it. They were like these little plays in front of a single camera. And so Desi and Lucille both figured out how to increase the production value of TV. But what they also did is they changed TV from something that you just kind of, people watched once and then it was done, like every TV show is live, to something that you could watch anytime.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Like, there was this point where I Love Lucy got really popular. And they had this incredible moment where they were pregnant in real life. And as Lucille Ball went into labor and gave birth, an episode of I Love Lucy, where their characters on screen also had a baby. And it was incredibly popular. Everyone loved I Love Lucy. They were selling I Love Lucy merch. But then they had this problem, which is, uh, we, they couldn't make more episodes for a while. So Desi Arnaz basically invented the rerun, the fact that you could rerun episodes. And so now, if you created a TV show, it wasn't something you could just make money off of one time. You could do reruns again and again and again. And now we live in the world of streaming.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  So it's kind of the case that if you work in TV, if you are a superstar, if you make a beloved hit TV show like I Love Lucy, or now Game of Thrones. Everyone around the world can watch that TV show at pretty much any time. So if you are in the TV business, you are not just competing with other people making TV right now. You are competing with every person who has made TV ever. You are competing with the best TV shows ever made. Now you're competing with the best content ever made. And so what that means is that, you know, the superstars who make the very most famous and popular content, they really make an outsized share of the rewards of money, you know? Like, so if you are a singer, you know, it used to be Go Back in Time, you know? Lots of people got paid to sing.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Uh, and so singers, you know, they could make some good money, but maybe they weren't fabulously wealthy. Even the most popular singers, um, weren't fabulously, fabulously wealthy in the way that, say, Taylor Swift is today. Cause the singers of today, people can listen to them all around the world. If you, and if you're a kind of like average singer, you might've been able to make a pretty good living back in the day. Maybe a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, what have you. But now you're competing against the very best singers and entertainers in the world. So it's much harder to make a liver, a living as a singer or musician, unless you're one of those people who are at the absolute top. In which case there are these huge returns for you. You know, you can make a lot of money. Taylor Swift is a billionaire.

• 8:04Mike Carruthers?

  And so how does that affect me? What was, so what's the lesson that I should learn from that?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  I think something you can learn from that is think about, you know, if we're thinking about younger people and you're choosing a career, what kind of career do you want to have? You know, if you're someone who wants to be the very, very best at what you do, you're obsessed, you're going to work hard to be the top of your field. You know, being in an industry with superstar effects, that can be great for you. You could make really good money and your work will really pay off. Whereas, you know, if you would really prefer to have work-life balance, you probably don't want to be in one of those fields because it's just really hard to, to make a living and have stability unless you're at the very top. You know, so maybe you want to be in a field like, say, nursing where they don't really have the superstar effect. It's not like if you're a nurse, you're competing with the very best nurse in your field.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  You know, we need lots of nurses and you can be a good nurse, but not the world's best nurse. And, you know, still make a good salary and, and have career stability.

• 9:03Mike Carruthers?

  Let's talk about tariffs, cause you hear that word a lot in the news. But I'm not sure I understand completely all the little details of how tariffs work and they clearly affect prices. So how do they work?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, a very short answer is that a tariff is a tax on trade, right? So if you're going to bring goods across the border into the country, you know, at the port or across the land crossing, then it will be taxed, you know, the if it's a 15% tariff, you know, take the value of that good as it crosses the border and whoever's importing it has to pay an extra 15% as a tax to the federal government. I think something that we've really seen over the past year that is a bit confusing or subtle about tariffs that trips people up is that, you know, you have one side say that, you know, tariffs are paid by foreigners and others say that, you know, that's a tax

• 10:01Speaker 01

  that's paid by the American people. And they're kind of both true. There's this element where like, you know, the tax is paid by whoever is importing a product. So, you know, that's often an American company, if these are American tariffs. But that company could choose to pass the cost of that tax on to consumers, in which case Americans are just paying higher prices for goods. But it's also possible that the American company that's importing that product might say to the, you know, the company they're trading with, you know, maybe the Chinese manufacturer, like, hey, you know, because of this tariff, we're going to pay you less. And they'll force the tariff onto that Chinese manufacturer. And so in a way, the Chinese manufacturer is paying that tariff. And so it can be different in

• 10:46Speaker 01

  different cases and it's kind of a matter of leverage, right? Like, companies might want to just increase the cost for customers, their customers. But maybe customers are really price sensitive and they're worried that won't work. So maybe they'll just eat the cost themselves. Or maybe the, you know, the importer, the American company that's importing, you know, TVs or what have you, you know?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  They'll be able to say to the Chinese company, the Chinese manufacturer, "We're just gonna pay you less because we have to pay this tariff." But if the Chinese manufacturer could say, "Screw you, I'm just gonna sell these TVs elsewhere," then no, yep, the American company's gonna have to pay the tariff. So there is something tricky about tariffs, where it is often hard to say definitively who is paying them.

• 11:27Mike Carruthers?

  One factor that seems to be affecting people's money and the economy in a big way is AI, because people are concerned that it's going to, or that it is replacing jobs, putting people out of work. So I'm curious what you have to say about it.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  One thing I think about a lot is what happened with bank tellers. And so there's this great researcher, great research done by a professor at Boston University, that looked at what happened to bank tellers when automated teller machines started getting installed at banks. This is a machine who's literally, you know, automated teller machine, and you're a bank teller, you know, what's gonna happen to you? You know, this is a machine literally designed to automate your job. And the surprising thing he found is that for decades, the number of bank tellers employed by banks continued to go up. Not like fast, you know, it was slow growth, but you know, the number of bank tellers did not go down, it kept going up for decades. But then there were kind of two things that happened

• 12:29Speaker 01

  that helped explain why bank tellers were not, did not go to extinction because of ATMs. One is this kind of interesting phenomenon, where sometimes technology that automates part of your job, it will actually make it so much cheaper to do that thing, that companies do more of it. So in this case, you know, banks by installing ATMs, the cost of running a bank branch went down. And as a result, they didn't say, "Okay, let's fire all the bank tellers." They said, "Oh great, let's open more bank branches." And so the number of tellers at each branch went down, but because they were opening new branches to serve more customers, the number of tellers went up. And another is this dynamic that there are some cases where machines or technology

• 13:14Speaker 01

  just automate 100% of someone's job, but it's actually more common that, you know, a part of your job is automated. Researchers, economists like to say that, you know, tasks are automated, not jobs. You know, so for bank tellers, maybe they spent less time counting cash and handing it to customers because the ATM could do that. But that meant that the bank tellers had more time to do things that ATMs could not do, like talk to customers and say, hey, have you thought about signing up for a credit card with our bank? Or, you know, hey, we have great financial advisors who could help you plan for retirement. And so a machine explicitly designed to automate their job didn't necessarily put them out of work because they could do other things with the team, the time that it freed up.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  So, you know, I think about bank tellers as everyone is fretting, as many of us are fretting about AI. And I wouldn't say that that means you should just be saying, when? And definitely, like, there can never be bad repercussions of automation. There certainly are people who can be hurt by automation, you know, lose their jobs. And, but I think the big takeaway is that a lot of these transitions are not as fast and sudden as you might think. There's time to adjust. And, you know, it's less that jobs just go away, and it's more that jobs change, and it's important to be adaptable.

• 14:32Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I guess the scary thing about AI is, you know, the ATM affected jobs for bank tellers, but not many other people. AI affects all kinds of jobs.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  I think it is really important at a time like this, when there's the potential for automation to impact a lot of jobs, you know, something like AI is perhaps a general purpose technology that could impact all sorts of jobs as opposed to the ATM that just more impacted bank tellers. And so I think that's a case where it is really important for like politicians and all of us should be thinking about, you know, how can we help workers who will be impacted by this or might be impacted by this?

• 15:10Mike Carruthers?

  Credit cards have become such an integral part of people's financial life today. And I know they impact our money in ways that a lot of people may not realize. So I want to ask you about that next.

• 15:25Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about the forces that affect your money, some of which you may not realize. I'm speaking with Alex Miossi from the podcast Planet Money, and he's author of a book called Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life. So let's talk about credit, Alex, specifically credit cards, since they've become, they've really become the tool we use to buy so many things.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Credit cards, when they were invented, were kind of incredible, where they, they, it's this really hard chicken and egg problem that, you know, to get stores to accept credit cards, you need lots of customers who are already using them to get customers to want to use them. You need lots of stores signed up. So banks and credit card companies did this really useful service of getting both customers and stores to adopt them. And for stores, it was, you know, it was this great deal. It was like, hey, you're chasing down all these little debts from customers, keeping track of how much your customers owe you. We'll take all that on, we'll pay you quickly and promptly, and then we'll take on all the pain and annoyance of, you know, getting those bills paid. And it was, you know, it was, it was a good deal, and it made it possible to, you know, use your Visa card, your MasterCard, all over the world. But I think as time has gone on, you know,

• 16:33Speaker 01

  the, the ability to, you know, have, move money from one bank to another, that's become a lot easier, thanks to technology. But credit cards still charge these very high fees. I don't think customers think about them that often, but every time you use a credit card at a store, there's a good chance that the credit card companies and banks are charging that store maybe 2.5% of the cost of the transaction as a fee for, for, you know, the credit card transaction. And that might not sound like a lot, but you have to remember that, like, for a restaurant or a coffee shop, their entire profit margin on the transaction might be 4%, maybe 2.5%. Maybe they just don't make any profit on some transactions, and it all goes to Visa.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  And so there, there is this strange economics going on, where to customers, it just feels like you're getting offered free stuff. But the reason you're getting that free stuff is because, you know, the banks, they want you to use their credit cards, so they can charge these fees. But then stores have to pay those fees. So what do stores do? They raise their prices. So now we're paying higher prices because of credit card fees. And so it's, it's very hidden, but there is this kind of pernicious reverse Robin Hood effect, where, you know, if you're pretty wealthy, you have a good credit score, you have this great... Credit card that gives you all sorts of miles and cash back. You know, you're paying a bit higher prices at stores because of credit card fees, but you probably get that back in the form of your, you know,

• 18:01Speaker 01

  points and miles and all those perks from your credit card. But you know, for someone who doesn't have a great credit score, they don't have that much money. They're probably paying in cash or with the debit cards. They're not getting benefits, you know? They just have to pay those higher fees that the store is charging because of credit card fees, but they're not getting that back. So there's this kind of, you know, indirect subsidy by lower income people of those points and cash back benefits that the more affluent people get to enjoy.

• 18:29Mike Carruthers?

  And well, I think I know the answer to this, but why is it that some retailers don't want to take American Express?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Because American Express charges a really, really high transaction fee that they then use to pay out these really great benefits to, you know, their affluent customers. But you know, lots of banks that use Visa or MasterCard have also, over the past 10 plus years, put out, you know, credit cards that give you really, really great rewards. And therefore they also charge those high fees, more similar to an American Express card. But stores can't say, no, no, no, we don't want to accept those higher fee credit cards because Visa says no. If you want to accept Visa, you got to accept all Visa cards, even the one with higher fees. And so this lawsuit was saying, hey, we shouldn't have to, you know, that's anti-competitive behavior.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  And, you know, a ruling did come down that sided with the retailers and stores against the credit card companies, saying that they should be able to distinguish between, you know, credit cards with higher and lower fees. So it is possible we will see changes here. I think people who watch this closely are a bit skeptical that stores will really want to start charging fees to people who use some of these kind of like fancier credit cards. Those are often customers who, you know, it's just something you do, do you really want to tell your customers, oh, hey, you have to use, it feels like nickel and diamond. You have to pay a little bit more if you want to use that card. But that is one potential way that we might get to a better place with credit cards.

• 19:56Mike Carruthers?

  The stock market has certainly changed from the days of where you would buy individual stocks. You needed a stockbroker, there were a lot of fees, and now people buy mutual funds. And how did that happen?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  What really changed was the rise of Vanguard. Right. And Vanguard is, you know, Wall Street firm, but not a place you go to to buy and sell individual stocks. The main thing you go to Vanguard for, and what their original purpose was, was index funds, as you said earlier, a way to, instead of buying and selling individual stocks, just more or less, almost invest in the entire stock market. And so, as the entire stock market grows, because the economy tends to grow, then, you know, your money will grow too. Very simple, very basic. And they charge very, very, very low fees. And, you know, it took a while, but index funds really took off. And that has really squeezed all those

• 20:52Speaker 01

  people on Wall Street, all those financiers who want you to give them their money, and they want to charge you high fees because they're really smart and they know how to invest your money. They know how to pick winners. And I think for the most part, like, that has been a great development. Like, most research has consistently found that those active investors, the people who have been paid very, very healthy amounts of money to invest people's retirement savings for them, just were not worth the money we were paying them. Like, they were, people were better off with index funds. And the markets really responded, like, more and more and more money has flowed into index funds. And it's really squeezed a lot of those firms that used to make a really good living by convincing people to give me your, your investment savings and I'll, I'll invest it for you.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  And I think, like, that's largely been an example of, like, the middle class and the average person getting a better deal from Wall Street, a better deal from finance. Like, the index fund is a fantastic financial product. And then, you know, it has been strange over the last years to see how, you know, the, the biggest trend in, in investing in finance, at least for kind of like your average consumer, is to use a product like Robin Hood and treat the, the stock market more and more like gambling, as something to have fun with, to make bets with. And I think that's, you know, there's a way where people have always seen Wall Street

• 22:18Speaker 01

  as gambling in a way, but of course, this has made it more like, you know, your, the finance app on your phone is a casino in your pocket.

• 22:26Mike Carruthers?

  But as we know, casinos, real gambling always favors the house, never favors the gambler. So.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yes. And I think this is a thing I would love for more people to understand is that if you use an app like Robinhood, it is completely free. You can buy and sell stocks and it doesn't cost you any money. And so there's a very good question you should ask yourself there. It's, why is this free for me? And usually the answer is that you are able to buy and sell stocks for free because someone, you know, in finance on Wall Street wants to be on the other side of your trade. And so they're willing to kind of front that costs, right? They're basically very happy to like, take the other side of your trades because they think you are going to make bad trades. So they are willing to take the other side of your trades and your bets. And that is why you are able

• 23:19Speaker 01

  to buy and sell for free. Like, that is largely the reason why it is frictionless, free to buy and sell stocks as, you know, an individual average person nowadays. It's because lots of people on Wall Street see you as dumb money and they want to take the other side of your trades because they think they will make money off of you in the same way that you're talking about, like the house always wins.

• 23:39Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this has been some really valuable and interesting insight into how the economy works, how our money works, what affects it. I really enjoyed this. I've been speaking with Alex Mayyasi from the podcast Planet Money, and he's author of a book called Planet Money, A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life. There's a link to that book in the show notes. And Alex, great. Thanks.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate your questions and talking about this.

• 24:11Mike Carruthers?

  Quitting has a bad reputation. We're taught that quitters are losers, that success comes from grit, persistence, and never giving up. And often, that's true. But not always. Sometimes quitting is exactly the right move. In fact, knowing when to walk away and doing it well can be one of the smartest decisions you'll ever make. The real challenge is figuring out the difference. When to push through and when to let go. And that is what Jeffrey Lockwood is here to discuss. He's a professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming and author of the book, "The Good Quit: Mastering the Fine Art of Giving Up." Hi, Jeffrey.

• 24:56Mike Carruthers?

  Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.

• 25:00Mike Carruthers?

  So I think people have a very immediate reaction when they hear the word "quit" or "quitting." It doesn't have a good connotation to it, that quitting is not what you do. You persevere, you tough it out, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but you just don't quit. But you have a very different view of quitting, so explain what that is.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Well, I wouldn't say that I am an advocate of quitting when the times get tough or when things get hard. But there is a kind of wisdom about quitting, knowing when and how and why to give up. And so quitting is, I think, is much more complicated than... That's a character flaw. It's part of living, and wise quitting is part of a full life.

• 25:53Mike Carruthers?

  And your definition of wise quitting is what?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  I would say that wise quitting reflects, well, what the Greeks called "phronesis," or practical wisdom. And it's kind of a combination of, you know, like, how should I put this? Book learning and street smarts, right? It's both rational thought, but it's also emotionally sophisticated. So it's a complicated endeavor, something that I think we get better at with practice. And really, I guess what it comes down to is... A wise or a good quit is one that in which an individual quits for the right reasons, at the right time and in the right way.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  And any one of those, we can screw up.

• 26:44Mike Carruthers?

  When you have something in your life that you're thinking about quitting, it is, to me, it's kind of the quintessential, you can't see the forest for the trees. You're so close to it that you can see, maybe I should quit, maybe I shouldn't. You can't really tell. You need some perspective.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  One of the things that we can do in terms of trying to decide whether this is a good quit is to engage our friends, to engage mentors, people we respect. Ask them, am I quitting too easily? Or conversely, am I foolishly persisting? And then you move on, you look at it, but I think we need to learn from a quit. Well, did that do what I wanted it to do? Or should I have hung in there a little bit longer? And so it's possible that we can regret. And regret is a sign that we should or could have done otherwise. And that's part of learning.

• 27:44Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, but it could also just be you regret because you don't know and now it's the road not taken and then you can fantasize about how wonderful it might have been. But you don't really know. And maybe quitting was a good idea. I mean, when I think of quitting mostly, I think of, when I first hear the word, I think of like a job. I think, you know, quit your job and when do you quit? And how unbearable does it have to get? Or what has to happen? And should you hang in there? And, you know, and that's always a tough one because, you know, it's easier to get another job if you've already got one. But the job you have may just be horrible. So I don't know. It's really hard.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  You talk about quitting work and that's, that's, you know, we had, what are they called? The great resignation, you know, following COVID, where there was this unprecedented wave of resignation, something like four million jobs a month were being, were being quit and people were doing it for all kinds of reasons. Greater pay, greater flexibility, family time, benefits, plus burnout and health risks. And all of those are going to be radically individualized. You know, the, the Greeks talked about virtue, right? And virtue was sort of leading a life that fulfilled the human potential, but they realized, you know, even back then, that not all people have the same capacities.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  And so the famous example is, you know, what is courageous for a civilian might be cowardly for a soldier. And so we have different capacities, different abilities, different tolerances. How much stress can you take? You know, how much, how much anxiety can you take? How much does move, does putting up with this position sets you up to, to move to a better position within that company versus jumping ship? And you start factoring in all of those considerations and you end up with some, I guess, giant spreadsheet filled with numbers that are incommensurable. You, you can't add apples and oranges.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  How much is a $20,000 cut in pay worth versus indigestion, sleepless nights and, and an ulcer? You know, money versus health, what are those trade-offs? It's, it's not going to be something that we're going to be able to apply a formula to. Same thing with personal relationships. How long do you hang in with an employer? How long do you hang in with a partner? How long do you hang in with a club or an organization? And then, you know, the other big realm of quitting is, is conflicts, you know, contests and wars. Imagine the difficulty that everybody from the soldier to the general to the president

• 30:32Speaker 02

  faces in terms of when do we surrender, right? When is it a lost cause?

• 30:39Mike Carruthers?

  When is it a lost cause? That's kind of a key question, isn't it? When is this like, when do you decide this is never gonna get better? It's never gonna be right. It's time to go. And usually it seems like you have to get hit in the head a few times before it finally dawns on you that, you know, this isn't gonna get better. And but so quitting probably shouldn't be your first reaction.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so. You know, if it was worth starting, then, you know, it's probably worth playing out to some degree. Now, you might say, you know, maybe quitting is not an irrational sort of early judgment, say, in a, in a, in a blind date, right? And so at the end of the evening, you go, wow, that's not worth following up. But you haven't invested much, right? And so I'm not even sure that I would be wanting to call that a quit, because nothing ever really got started. You didn't have any, you didn't have any stake. But then, of course, the more, the more you put into an endeavor, the more difficult it is to quit. And that kind of makes sense.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  But then we have to, we have to be also concerned about whether we're being foolish and using the kind of reasoning like, well, I've, I've already put four years into this relationship. I've already put five years into this job. I can't quit now, or all of that, all of that investment is, is going to be gone. And that can be, that can be kind of fallacious or dangerous thinking as well.

• 32:14Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I had a, I had a, I was just thinking about this as you were talking, because I hadn't thought about this in a long time. Because I was raised in a family, you know, my father always said, you know, you, you gotta stick it out. You, you can't just walk away, you know? That's not what real men do. But... I had a job once. I got hired for a job that I thought I really wanted. And as soon as I got in there, and I hadn't even started yet, but I was training. I was learning how to do what I was supposed to do. I just got such a bad vibe and also realized that my hope was one day to like, work my way up the ladder. I was starting, not at the bottom, but I wasn't.

• 32:59Mike Carruthers?

  This was not a job I really wanted, but this is how you had to get up the ladder. And then I realized, well, the people up the ladder had been there for a long time, and they never leave. They're never gonna go, and I'm gonna be stuck down here, and I don't like these people. And I quit before I started. I said, no, I'm sorry, and I walked away and really upset a lot of people because... But I have no regret about that at all.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  You know, that almost falls in the... I mean, quits can be very, very easy, very hard. I guess if they're really, really easy, then, you know, in some ways, we'd be reluctant to even call them a quit because we've not, you know, we've not really begun, or it's a very fleeting obligation. But taking a job, it does seem, one of the things you're avoiding is what's, you know, sometimes called, you know, the sunk cost, right? I've already sunk so much in that I can't, you know, I can't get out. Governments do that all the time. I mean, that's, you know, talk about trying to get out of a war. We've already lost this many lives. How can we give up now? Versus like a job where you have this sense very early on

• 34:10Speaker 02

  that something is not right. This is not going anywhere. Maybe it wasn't the employment equivalent of a first date, but you weren't very far in, right? And so getting out, and in some ways, I mean, not only are you doing yourself a favor, but then that company has not invested a whole lot of training and time and resources in you either. And so that might have been the best thing for all the parties concerned. If you weren't going to flourish. But again, you know, that's, you know, that's the tough part, right, is, is, you know, the delay of gratification.

• 34:46Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I bring it up just because sometimes quitting is a struggle, and I did struggle a little with this, but not a lot, you know, this was one of the few times that quitting just seemed to be the right thing to do, but there are plenty of other times where it's, it's much more unclear.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  We should reflect on our quits. I think that's very important. If we're going to mature, if we're going to develop into a, what, a good quitter, right, a practiced quit, and quitter is an interesting term, we can explore that later if you wish, but if we're going to get better at quitting, right, if we're going to get better at anything, right, we have to practice it, and then we have to reflect. And one of the possibilities is after time, we reflect and think, oh, that was badly done, right, or that was badly timed, or I could have quit this partially rather than entirely, that's, we could do partial quits as well, I didn't have to give up everything, right, I could have just given

• 35:51Speaker 02

  up part of something. I mean, so one possibility is we, we think we could have done better, right, regret, but the other possibility is, damn, I got that one right, and I'm going to learn from that. When, when I get into something and all of the signs are this is not working, I am not going to punish myself indefinitely out of a sense of misplaced pride, or, or identity, or messages from others, and I learned, and, you know, I'm speaking for you, I learned something important about myself and about quitting, and I got that one right.

• 36:26Mike Carruthers?

  But I would imagine that most people and who face the decision of whether to quit or not, it isn't quite so clear. It's either, it's murky, it's, you know, what happens if I stick it out? And, and I guess the question is, so what's the criteria that you use to decide, is this a good time to quit, or should I stick it out a little longer and reevaluate? How do you, what's the, what are the questions you ask yourself to come to some sort of answer?

• 37:00Speaker 02

  I think the questions are first and foremost, why am I quitting? Is it something where the harm that I'm facing is not worth, is not worth continuing? Or is it, this is just really difficult for me right now? Or I think I deserve better? I mean, sometimes we can think very grandiosely about ourselves. And so we need to think, why am I thinking about quitting? And I think we need to, to use trusted others to reflect on that. And then once we've decided that we're quitting for the right reasons, right? Then I think we have to think about, is now the right time to quit? All right, and so even quitting something that one ought to quit,

• 37:43Speaker 02

  or it would be beneficial to quit, I think it's possible to quit too soon. It's also possible to endure too long. And so when to quit is important. And then also what to quit? I mean, I know people, I mean, here's, so here's a really simple quit, right? So people will say, well, I'm going to become a vegetarian. I'm going to quit all meat. And what they find after time is, and they come to realize, well, you know, I don't know that some meat once a week is, I'll, I'll, I'll cut back. It'll be a very different diet, but I don't have to give something up entirely. So what to quit? Why quit? When to quit? And then, you know, if, once you've got all of those figured out,

• 38:28Speaker 02

  it's still possible to ask yourself, it's important to ask yourself, how am I going to quit? All right, so let's go back to your job, right? You ask, why am I, why do I want to quit? And you're thinking, well, there's a ceiling. I'm never going to get to ascend in this company. That's a good reason to quit. What am I going to quit? The question is, do I have to quit the entire job? Or could I move, say, to another department? But then the other question that we all have to ask is, once we got that part done, the question is how to quit? And I've seen people who have quit for the right reasons, at the right time and in the right amount, and then they botch how to quit.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Because they do it and they burn bridges, they insult others, they create unnecessary trauma and stress, maybe they quit very publicly, right, hoping to embarrass, right, the company. Can be a really disastrously bad move to do that out of anger.

• 39:28Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, that take this job and shove it approach does seem to have that, you know, it might feel good in the moment, but boy, the consequences of burning that bridge and especially doing it in such a crappy way, that's going to haunt you, I think, and come back and bite you.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Oh, I think that's right. You know, the other thing you mentioned about, and it sounds like you grew up in a family very much like mine, you know, the message was you don't quit, you know, you just don't quit, you hang in there. And one of the things that's important about quitting, important to think about in quitting, is that what we do in our lives shapes our identity, who we are. And so quitting also shapes our identity. I'm the kind of person who doesn't put up with, or I'm the kind of person who gives up too easily, or whatever the case is. So both persistence and quitting shape our identity. That's kind of inescapable.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  And then upon reflection, you think, is this the kind of person who I want to be, right? Because quitting is a way of cultivating, fostering one's character, right? Who am I going to be?

• 40:40Mike Carruthers?

  What you said earlier, I think, is so true about getting other people's advice, because people have sought my advice, and it is so crystal clear to me what they ought to do, but it isn't to them. And I'm sure the roles have been reversed, where I struggle with the answer, and other people have said, what, are you nuts? Of course you want to get out of there. Or, no, don't quit, you got to stay, because here's why. But it's clearer to them, because they're not involved, than it is to me.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  No, I think that's absolutely right. And I think choosing, who shall we call it, your mentors, advisors, is, you know, is really important. And, you know, it's kind of funny, we have this, kind of this, what would you call it? Socially correct notion that we ought not to judge, right? That we ought to be neutral, that we ought to support people no matter what.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  But I don't want friends who are going to support me when I'm doing something stupid. I don't think they're friends. I think they should be asking me hard questions. Why are you quitting? What are you quitting? When are you quitting? And how do you plan to do this quitting? You know, a, you know, a good friend is brutally, lovingly frank.

• 41:57Mike Carruthers?

  You mentioned earlier that we could talk about the word quitting later on, and this is later on. So what, what about the word quitting?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Well, the reason I think that we have such a negative valence about quitting is because we've conflated quitting with being a quitter. All right. I mean, take Simone Biles, right? The gold medal gymnast. What is it? The last Olympics, she had this psychological, physiological disorder, the swirlies, right? And she was unable to perform her, her athletic feats. And she decided that she was going to leave the team, that she was in danger in herself and she was no longer an asset to her teammates. And people had all of these responses, right? And, and people wanted to label her a quitter, which was just completely ridiculous.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  You look at her athletic record, the number of gold medals. The woman is not a quitter. But because we conflate having quit with being a quitter, she worked really, really hard to try to avoid the phrase, "I quit." But she did quit. She really did quit, and she exemplified a good quit. She quit at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons, right? It was a beautiful example of a good quit. But because quit has such this, a negative sense about it, she would not say that she had quit. And I think she did. I think it was a wonderful quit from which we could all learn something. But her detractors said, "Oh, she's a quitter."

• 43:37Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is a great topic to discuss, primarily because it's so seldom discussed. And yet, we all face those circumstances, those situations where we're torn between staying and going. And I think this is really helpful. I've been speaking with Jeffrey Lockwood. He's author of the book, "The Good Quit: Mastering the Fine Art of Giving Up." And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Jeffrey, thank you.

• 44:04Mike Carruthers?

  Have you ever had your eyes start twitching for no apparent reason? Feels weird, and it usually is harmless. That twitch is called eyelid myokymia, and it's basically a tiny muscle spasm caused by overactive nerve signals. And here's the interesting part: the most common triggers are things most of us deal with every day: stress, lack of sleep, caffeine, even too much screen time. In other words, it's not random, it's your body telling you that your system's a little overloaded. The good news is, it almost always goes away on its own. But if it does stick around for weeks, or spreads beyond the eyelid, that's when doctors

• 44:48Mike Carruthers?

  say you should have that checked out. So that annoying little twitch is not your eye malfunctioning, it's your nervous system asking you to dial things back a notch. And that is something you should know. So there are two things you could do to really help support this podcast. One is write a review and leave a rating on whatever app you're listening on, and also tell someone else about the podcast and get them to listen, which helps us grow our audience. One or both of those things would be fabulous. I'm Mike Carruthers, thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.