Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away
Annie Duke, 2022
We are taught that winners never quit. Annie Duke, a poker champion and decision scientist, shows the opposite: knowing when to quit is what sets apart the people who end up winning. You will learn why walking away is so hard even when everything is clear, and how to agree with yourself in advance on the moment to stop.
Who it is for
For anyone who has been dragging along a project, a job or an investment for a long time and can't decide whether to hold on or walk away. And for anyone starting something new who wants to know in advance when to stop.
If you quit on time, you will usually feel like you're quitting too early.
The man who walked off the stage
Las Vegas, 1967. Richard Pryor walks onto the stage of a big hotel. He is young, and things are going well: television wants him, the rooms are full. Pryor looks out at the audience, asks himself out loud what he is doing there, and walks off without finishing his set. From the outside it looks like a disaster. In fact, that step is where a different Pryor begins, sharp and honest, the one who would later be called one of the greatest comedians.
Annie Duke knows the price of steps like that from her own life. She was once writing a dissertation in a field called cognitive psychology: the science of how people think and choose. Illness forced her to leave her studies, and she turned to professional poker. Poker, Duke believes, teaches one skill better than almost anything else: knowing when to fold. In her words, this is exactly what separates strong players from amateurs. The strong ones get out of a hand far more often, while amateurs hold on to their cards to the very end. In 2022 she wrote a book about that skill.
The book's main idea sounds strange in a culture that sings hymns to grit. Quitting is not a weakness. It is a skill. The trouble is usually not that people give up too easily. More often they hold on too long: to a job, a project, an investment, a relationship.
Ahead are climbers on Everest, the founder of a famous messaging app, a monkey on a pedestal and a coin toss that made people happier. You will learn why it is so hard to walk away even when everything is already clear, and how to agree with yourself in advance on the moment it is time to stop.
Three who turned back
Everest, May 1996. The expedition is led by an experienced guide, Rob Hall. He sets a turnaround time: if the group is not on the summit by one in the afternoon, everyone heads down. The rule is strict, because descending in the dark and in bad weather can cost you your life.
At half past eleven, the doctor Stuart Hutchison realises the summit is still about three hours away. There is no way to make it by one. He announces that he is turning back and asks two companions, John Taske and Lou Kasischke, to come with him. It is hardest for Kasischke: Everest is the last mountain on his list of the Seven Summits, the name climbers give to the highest peaks of every continent. But in the end all three turn around and return to camp alive.
Hall himself reached the summit around two in the afternoon and stayed to wait for a client who had fallen behind, Doug Hansen. Hansen only got there at four. A year earlier he had already attempted Everest with Hall and turned back short of the top, so leaving without it a second time was probably even harder. Both died on the descent. The journalist Jon Krakauer, who was on the same expedition, later wrote that the three who turned back were among the few who made the right call that day.
Duke draws attention to who we remember. The people who reached the summit are treated as heroes, while almost nobody knows the names of those who turned back. We call grit a virtue and quitting a weakness, even though that day it was the decision to leave that saved lives. For Duke, they are not opposites but two answers to one question: keep going or not.
About the author
Annie Duke is a former professional poker player, a World Series of Poker bracelet winner and now a consultant on decision making. She is the author of the bestseller Thinking in Bets.
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