Why Intentional Quitting is the Key to Success

David Carson: 00:00:01

My friend, Sarah, told me the most devastating story last week, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. She was cleaning out her garage and found this dusty keyboard, the musical kind, shoved behind some camping gear that's never been camping. Her 11-year-old daughter spots it and asks, "Mom, is that yours? Do you play?" And Sarah just freezes, because, yeah, she used to play. Piano lessons from age seven to 13. Her mom had paid for those lessons up front, six months at a time, and when Sarah tried to quit at 11, her mom lost it. "We don't quit things in this family," she said, which was hilarious because Sarah's dad had quit smoking. Her uncle had quit his job to start a business, and her grandmother had definitely quit caring what anyone thought sometime around 1987. But apparently, quitting piano was different. That was the bad kind of quitting, the failure kind. The kind that proved you had no discipline, no character, no follow-through. So Sarah's mom made her finish it out. Every week for two more years, Sarah would sit at Mrs. Henderson's piano, butchering Fur Elise while her teacher sighed dramatically and probably reconsidered her entire career. Sarah hated every minute. She told me she learned absolutely nothing those last two years, except that continuing something you despise doesn't build character. It just builds resentment, and makes you really, really good at watching the clock. The moment she turned 13 and her mom's prepaid lessons ran out, Sarah never touched a piano again, not once in 30 years. She told her daughter, "I used to play," and then quickly changed the subject, because even talking about it brought back that feeling of being trapped in something she'd wanted to escape. Here's what got me, though. Two days later, Sarah's at a dinner party, and some guy mentions he's a concert pianist. Sarah tells him about her failed piano career, expecting sympathy or maybe the usual, "Oh, you should have stuck with it" lecture. Instead, he laughs and says, "I quit piano four times as a kid. Drove my parents absolutely insane. But every time I came back to it, I came back because I wanted to, not because someone was making me. That's when I actually learned." Then he drops this bomb. "The kids who never quit, most of them don't play anymore. They burned out. Or they're still playing, but they hate it. The ones who quit and came back, we're the ones who stuck around."

Sarah texts me this from the dinner party. "Am I having a midlife crisis in real time? What if my mom was wrong? What if quitting at 11 was actually the right move and forcing me to continue was the mistake?" And I'm reading this text thinking, "Holy shit. What if she's right?" What if everything we've been taught about never giving up, about persistence being the key to success, about winners never quitting and quitters never winning, what if all of that is actually backwards? What if the key to success isn't refusing to quit? What if it's knowing exactly when to quit and having the guts to actually do it? Welcome to Dumbify, the only show where motivational speakers would probably burn me in effigy. I'm your host, David Carson. Let's get dumb.

THEME SONG: 00:03:48

Dumbify, let your neurons dance. Put your brain in backwards pants. Genus hides in daft disguise. Brilliance wears those googly eyes. So honk your nose and chase that spark. Dumb is just smart in the dark. Dumbify, yell it like a goose. It's thinking wrong on purpose with juice.

David Carson: 00:04:15

Today, we're exploring an idea that sounds like it was invented by someone who's given up on life, that the secret to success isn't grinding it out and never giving up. It's knowing when to walk away, cut your losses, and try something completely different. It's the idea that quitting isn't failure, it's strategy. Now, I know what you're thinking, "David, this sounds like advice from someone who's justifying their own mediocrity." And look, I get it. We've all been marinated in the cult of persistence. Never give up. Push through the pain. Winners never quit, and quitters never win. It's on motivational posters in every middle school gymnasium in America, usually featuring someone climbing a mountain or a bald eagle doing something inspirational. But here's the thing nobody talks about. Every single successful person you admire has quit dozens, sometimes hundreds of things to get where they are. They just don't call it quitting, they call it pivoting or course correction or strategic reallocation of resources. But it's quitting. They stopped doing something that wasn't working and started doing something else. Let me tell you about Seth Godin. In 2007, this guy was already a pretty successful marketing consultant and author. He'd written multiple bestsellers, built a successful career, but he noticed something that was making the self-help industrial complex extremely uncomfortable. He noticed that the advice everyone was giving, "Never give up."... persistence is everything, was actually destroying people's lives.

SFX: 00:06:05

[gasps]

David Carson: 00:06:05

Godin started researching why some people succeeded and others didn't. And what he found was disturbing.

SFX: 00:06:12

Oh my God.

David Carson: 00:06:12

The most successful people weren't the ones who never quit. They were the ones who quit the right things at the right time.

SFX: 00:06:20

Yes.

David Carson: 00:06:20

They were world-class quitters, who just happened to persist at a few specific things that mattered. He wrote a book about it called The Dip, and the central argument was heretical. He said that most things in life aren't worth finishing, that you should quit early and often, that the resources you're wasting on things that aren't working could be used on things that are. And here's the part that made every motivational speaker lose their minds. He said that winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right times. The backlash was immediate and brutal. Success coaches called him defeatist. Business gurus said he was promoting a loser mentality. One particularly aggressive LinkedIn thought leader posted a 17-paragraph manifesto about how Godin was destroying the work ethic of an entire generation. The core message was clear.

SONG: 00:07:20

You can't help people to quit. That's giving up. That's surrendering. That's admitting defeat. Real winners never quit. Real winners push through.

David Carson: 00:07:44

But Godin kept digging into the data, and what he found was even more threatening to conventional wisdom. The research showed that people who were willing to quit things that weren't working had more time, energy, and resources to invest in things that were working.

Meanwhile, the never-quit people were trapped in what economists call the sunk-cost fallacy, throwing good time after bad money, staying in dead-end jobs, failed relationships, and hopeless projects just because they'd already invested so much. He studied Olympic athletes. Turns out they quit sports constantly. They'd try gymnastics, quit, try swimming, quit, try track, quit, until they found the one sport where they had a genuine advantage. Then they'd go all-in on that one thing. The athletes who never quit anything were the ones who burned out or never made it past regional competitions. Godin looked at successful entrepreneurs and saw the exact same pattern. The ones who made it big had an average of 3.8 failed businesses behind them, businesses they'd quit. They didn't push through. They didn't persist. They closed up shop and tried something different. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurs who insisted on making their first idea work, no matter what, were the ones who went bankrupt and bitter. Today, The Dip is considered essential reading for anyone serious about success. But when it came out, suggesting that quitting was a skill, not a character flaw, was professional heresy. But Godin wasn't the first person to discover that strategic quitting beats blind persistence. Let me tell you about a guy who quit so many things, he should have been the patron saint of giving up.

David Carson: 00:09:39

Steve Jobs. Yes, that Steve Jobs. The guy whose face is on every inspirational poster about innovation and persistence. Here's what they don't tell you in the motivational speeches. Jobs was a serial quitter, who quit nearly everything he started. He enrolled at Reed College in 1972, one of the most expensive colleges in America. His working-class parents had scraped together every penny to send him there. Six months in, he quit. Just dropped out. Didn't even finish his first year. His parents were devastated. His friends told him he was throwing away his future. College counselors warned him he'd never amount to anything without a degree. But here's where it gets interesting. After dropping out, Jobs didn't leave campus. He just stopped taking the required courses and started sitting in on classes that actually interested him. One of them was a calligraphy class, fonts, typeface design, the proper spacing between letters, completely useless for any practical career path. 10 years later, when Jobs was designing the Macintosh, he insisted it have multiple typefaces and proportionally-spaced fonts, the first computer to do so. Microsoft had to scramble to copy it. That useless calligraphy class, the one he only took because he'd quit the sensible pre-med track, became one of the Mac's defining features and changed personal computing forever. But wait. It gets better. Jobs also quit his own company. In 1985, after a brutal power struggle with Apple's board of directors, he was forced out of the company he'd founded. He could have fought it, could have launched legal battles, could have spent years trying to claw his way back. Instead, he quit. He walked away. The business press called it the greatest failure in Silicon Valley history. Colleagues said his career was over. One particularly smug analyst told Fortune magazine...

SONG: 00:11:57

Apple made the right decision. Jobs is a visionary. But he's too chaotic to run a company. He'll probably do consulting or something. His best days are behind him.

David Carson: 00:12:21

So what did Jobs do after quitting Apple? He started NeXT Computer, which ultimately failed as a hardware company. He bought a struggling animation studio called Pixar from George Lucas for $10 million. Most people thought he'd overpaid for what was essentially a tech demo company making expensive short films. Pixar went on to revolutionize animation, and was sold to Disney for $7.4 billion. NeXT's operating system became the foundation for Mac OS X when Apple bought the company. And Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, where he proceeded to create the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

if Jobs doesn't quit Apple in: 1985

So what's actually happening in our brains when we refuse to quit versus when we strategically walk away?

SONG: 00:14:46

Time for science.

Time to get unnecessarily nerdy with it. 'Cause nerding out is what we do. And we're not going to apologize for it. Get ready for

science.

David Carson: 00:15:10

Dr. Daniel Kahneman at Princeton won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on decision-making, and one of his most important discoveries was the sunk-cost fallacy. This is the cognitive bias that makes us continue investing in something just because we've already invested in it, even when all the evidence says, "We should quit." Here's what's happening in your brain when you've spent time, money, or effort on something. Your brain starts treating those past investments as reasons to continue. The more you've invested, the harder it becomes to walk away, even when walking away is objectively the right decision. It's why people stay in terrible relationships because they've already invested five years. It's why companies keep funding failing projects, because they've already spent $50 million. It's why my friend Sarah kept showing up to piano lessons she hated, because her mom had already paid for six months. But here's the thing. Your past investments are gone. They're spent. They're not coming back whether you quit or continue. The only question that matters is, does continuing make sense based on future outcomes? But our brains can't think that way. We're wired to avoid feeling like we wasted our past investments, even when that feeling makes us waste our future investments. Dr. Hal Arkes at Ohio State University ran a series of experiments on this. He gave people scenarios where they invested money in a project that was clearly failing. The rational choice was always to cut losses and redirect resources to something more promising. But over 80% of participants chose to invest more money in the failing project. When asked why, they said things like, "I've come too far to quit now," or, "I can't let all that work be for nothing." Arkes called this the too much invested to quit syndrome. And here's the brutal part. The more someone had invested, the more irrationally they behaved. The people who'd invested the most were the least likely to quit, even when quitting would save them from even bigger losses. But there's another piece to this puzzle. Dr. Angela Duckworth at University of Pennsylvania became famous for her research on grit, the ability to persist toward long-term goals. Her TED Talk has been viewed millions of times, and for a while, grit was treated as the ultimate predictor of success. Schools started teaching grit. Companies started hiring for grit. The message was clear. Never give up, and you'll succeed. But then something interesting happened. Follow-up research by other scientists found that grit only predicts success when you're pursuing the right goal. When you're pursuing the wrong goal, grit is actually negatively correlated with success.... the grittiest people pursuing the wrong goals just fail harder and longer than everyone else. [instrumental music plays] Dr. Duckworth herself has been quoted saying that knowing when to quit is just as important as knowing when to persevere, but somehow that part doesn't make it into the motivational speeches. Go figure.

Meanwhile, economists studying opportunity cost have shown that every hour you spend on something that's not working is an hour you can't spend on something that is working. They've calculated that the average person wastes approximately 13 hours per week on activities that don't contribute to their goals, usually because they feel obligated to finish what they started. The research is clear.

Strategic quitting isn't giving up. It's the only way to make room for the things that actually matter. [instrumental music plays] But we've been so thoroughly conditioned to see all quitting as failure that we keep showing up to metaphorical piano lessons we hate just to prove that we're not quitters.

SONG: 00:19:24

Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb word of the day. Dumb word of the day. It's a word. It's dumb. Use responsibly.

David Carson: 00:19:35

All right, it's time for my favorite part of the show. It's time for Dumb Word of the Day, where we celebrate vocabulary that sounds like it was invented by someone having a stroke, but actually explains everything. And today's dumb word is perseveration, spelled P-E-R-S-E-V-E-R-A-T-I-O-N. Perseveration. Now, you're probably thinking, "David, that's just perseverance with extra letters," but you'd be wrong, and that wrongness is exactly why this is our dumb word of the day. Perseveration is a term from psychology and neurology. It describes the pathological repetition of a behavior or thought, even when it's clearly not working and you know it's not working. It's what happens when your brain gets stuck in a loop and can't break out, even when breaking out is obviously the right move. People with certain types of brain injuries show perseveration. They'll try to solve a problem the same way over and over and over, failing each time, fully aware they're failing, but unable to try a different approach. It's like their brain's "quit this strategy and try something else" function is broken. But here's why it's perfect for today's episode. That thing we call persistence, that virtue we've been taught to worship, sometimes it's just perseveration with better PR. Sometimes what we're praising as determination is actually just getting stuck in a failure loop and calling it character building. The difference between persistence and perseveration is whether the strategy is working. If you're trying the same approach and making progress, that's persistence. If you're trying the same approach and failing repeatedly, that's perseveration. But our culture can't tell the difference. We praise both equally as long as you don't quit. [instrumental music plays] Let's use it in a sentence. After his third failed attempt to make a souffle using motor oil instead of eggs, Marcus realized his commitment to the recipe was less admirable persistence and more clinical perseveration, possibly requiring professional intervention. That was weird and vaguely concerning. Moving on. Here's your dumbify challenge for this week. I call it the quit list audit. Here's how it works. I want you to make two lists. List number one, everything you're currently committed to, your job, your hobbies, your side projects, your volunteer work, your subscriptions, your social obligations, everything that takes up your time, energy, or mental bandwidth. Don't judge, just list. Be comprehensive. Include that book club you haven't been to in four months, but can't bring yourself to officially quit. Include that gym membership you're still paying for. Include that app you're building that you haven't touched in six weeks. List number two, if you were starting your life over today with no previous commitments, which of those things would you choose to start? Not which ones you'd continue out of obligation or guilt or because you've already invested so much. Which ones would you actively choose to begin if you had complete freedom? Now, here's the uncomfortable part. Everything on list one that's not on list two, that's something you should probably quit. Those are your sunk costs. Those are your perseverations. Those are the things you're continuing only because you've already started them, not because they're actually serving your goals. I'm not saying quit everything immediately. I'm saying identify what you're doing purely out of obligation versus what you're doing because it actually matters. Because here's the truth. [instrumental music plays] Every hour you spend on something from list one that's not on list two is an hour you can't spend on something that could actually be on list two. Week one, make the lists. Be honest, be brutal. The goal is awareness, not immediate action. Week two, pick one small thing that's on list one, but not list two, something low stakes. Quit it. Cancel the subscription. Resign from the committee. Stop showing up to the thing. Practice the words, "This isn't working for me anymore and I'm going to redirect my energy elsewhere." Week three, notice what happens. Do you feel guilty? Do you feel relieved? Do you feel both? Sit with those feelings and then notice whether anyone even cares that you quit. I'm willing to bet most people won't even notice, which tells you something important about how much your continued participation actually mattered. Bonus points, if someone accuses you of being a quitter, look them dead in the eye and say, "You're absolutely right and it's one of my most valuable skills." Then walk away slowly while they process what just happened. [instrumental music plays] And that's our show. I'm David Carson. Thank you for getting dumb with me today. If this episode made you reconsider whether you're persisting at things that matter or just perseverating out of stubbornness, share it with someone who needs permission to quit something. If you want more permission to quit things that aren't working and start things that might, subscribe to the Dumbify Newsletter at david-carson.com. Until then, remember, stay curious, stay flexible, and for the love of God, quit something this week.