When to Quit with Annie Duke

As the great Kenny Rogers said you’ve got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

Quitting often has negative connotations. We’re told to try harder, to stick it out and no matter what to push through.

However, is it time we rethought our relationship with quitting?

Annie Duke, poker player extraordinaire and author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller “Thinking in Bets”, addresses this very point in her brand-new book “Quit”.

In a strangely serendipitous coincidence, this podcast was recorded on the day the UK’s Prime Minister left her job.

I’d highly recommend listening to this charming conversation, but if you don’t have an hour, here are 3 key takeaways about when to show grit and when to quit.

1.     Muhammad Ali and Risking Your Health

What comes to mind when you think of Muhammad Ali?

Rumble in the Jungle? Float Like a Butterfly, Sting like a Bee?

Muhammad Ali was acclaimed for his perseverance and toughness. The man was a formidable fighter, incredibly witty and chose to be stripped of his heavyweight title for taking a stand against the Vietnam War.

Nevertheless, his attitude to quitting may have hurt him and his family.

After the Rumble in the Jungle, where he regained his heavyweight title fighting the much younger George Foreman, his doctors told him that his fighting days should be over. They were worried about the renal failure and neurological damage he was experiencing.

By choosing to persevere when friends, medics, and colleagues were telling him not to he put his health in jeopardy his quality of life deteriorated dramatically.

You’ve got to know which voices to listen to and which to screen out when considering when to quit.

2.     A Happy Glitch

We often associate bravery with those who stick it out, but it’s also applicable to those who are tough enough to walk away.

Stuart Butterfield had a growing company called Glitch, $6 million in the bank, backing from Andreesen Horowitz, yet something wasn’t sitting right with him.

He knew the company he’d developed and poured his heart and soul into was not going to scale in the way he wanted it to.

Despite immense peer pressure – he walked away from what he’d built and wound down the company.

However, elements of glitch’s interface still live on. In fact, I bet you use it every day.

He founded Slack afterwards.

3.     The Sunk Cost Fallacy

Sarah Olson Martinez reached out to Annie asking whether to quit her job as a Hospital Administrator.

During their zoom call it became apparent that though Sarah had loved being an ER doctor, her promotion to Hospital Administrator had changed her relationship with work.

The role made her miserable as it involved much more admin and much less medicine.

Where her previous job had been contained to when she was physically present at work, being an administrator was all-encompassing.

To compound the misery, she had two young children at home and time working out of hours was time she’d never get back with her kids.

Though she was at the end of her tether, she talked about her fellow medics resembling Navy SEALs in their attitude to quitting.  

Annie reframed the problem as a sunk-cost fallacy when speaking with her. Though she couldn’t get the time back from the misery of her previous job, she could change paths and have a much higher likelihood of being happier.

Sarah changed jobs and was in a much happier place when she last spoke with Annie.

If you want to find out more, have a look at the video below or listen here.