
Knowing when to quit - an under-rated skill. - ColinWright
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/30/the-upside-of-quitting-full-transcript/
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gasull
tl;dr is in the one-to-last paragraph:

 _“A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.” In 1937, a self-help pundit
named Napoleon Hill included that phrase in his very popular book Think and
Grow Rich. Hill was inspired in part by the rags-to-riches industrialist
Andrew Carnegie. These days the phrase is often attributed to Vince Lombardi,
the legendarily tough football coach. What a lineage! And it does make a lot
of sense, doesn’t it? Of course it takes tremendous amounts of time and effort
and, for lack of a more scientific word, stick-to-itiveness, to make any real
progress in the world. But time and effort and even stick-to-itiveness are not
in infinite supply. Remember the opportunity cost: every hour, every ounce of
effort you spend here cannot be spent there. So let me counter Napoleon Hill’s
phrase with another one, certainly not as well known. It’s something that
Stella Adler, the great acting coach, used to say: Your choice is your talent.
So choosing the right path, the right project, the right job or passion or
religion — that’s where the treasure lies; that’s where the value lies. So if
you realize that you’ve made a wrong choice — even if already you’ve sunk way
too much cost into it — well, I’ve got one word to say to you, my friend.
Quit._

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lubujackson
There's a difference between "quitting" and "putting your energy elsewhere".
The second is a good thing, the first is just giving up.

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itships
Yeah, the article addressed that pretty well:

VENKATESH: _So one of the strange things we found out when we spoke to
baseball players is that they have their own language for quitting. They
actually quit. They just don’t call it that. They don’t call it quitting. They
don’t call it giving up. But, they say, “You know what? I’m just going to shut
it down for a while.”_

VENKATESH: _So, what does it mean to be a quitter as opposed to a “shutter
downer”?_

HALL: _Probably the same thing, is just sounds better when you say ‘I’m just
shutting down.’ You know, it’s like you’re not really doing it, but, you know,
you are._

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bennesvig
Seth Godin's "The Dip" talks about this and knowing the difference between a
dip and a cul-de-sac.

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checoivan
Agreed. "The-Dip" is a great read on this topic. His basic premise is great in
the sense that it's not about quitting or sticking into something for sake of
stubbornness.

It's all about _knowing_ what It'll take to quit before hand, see if it's
worth starting, and improve the odds of making it past the dip.

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steve8918
Unfortunately I had to quit the article about halfway through. It being a
transcript of a radio broadcast made it pretty hard to follow, at least for
me, but what I read was pretty fascinating, especially the part about the
baseball player.

Does anyone know if there's a version of this that is formatted as a article?

~~~
kalid
Link to their podcast -- more enjoyable than reading a transcript.

[http://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/freakonomics-
radio/id3546...](http://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/freakonomics-
radio/id354668519)

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dhbradshaw
From the examples, it sounds like the answer to the question "when should I
quit" comes most easily when you have some source of objectivity.

It's easy, from the outside, to see a baseball minor league player in their
early 30s and think "he would be better off quitting." The hard part is to
accept that idea from the inside. Sometimes having a dream to be striving for
is nearly as rewarding as success itself.

~~~
madh
This reminds me of Rickey Henderson, who played for 25 seasons, played minor
league ball when he was 48 and still refuses to retire.

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dangoor
I listened to this over the weekend. It was entertaining, but can be summed up
with "Sometimes you quit too early, sometimes you quit too late" from
somewhere in the middle of the program.

Not a lot of hard data, but some interesting anecdotes.

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bedris
The podcast also highlighted the importance of "failing fast," or figuring out
what will or will not work as soon as possible, and adjusting accordingly.
This iterative approach to finding success seems to pervade start-up culture,
and in my instances, is very sound advice IMHO.

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sayemm
I hate the word "pivot" because it's over-abused in startup parlance, but I
like it as a way to describe smart navigating -- not just in startups per say,
but maybe also in the bigger game of life as well.

I think it's important to remain focused on one big long-term
destination/path, but still be flexible to "quit" short-term and change
directions along the way to eventually get there.

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bennesvig
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn
fool about it." \-- W.C. Fields

~~~
re_todd
Can't remember the source ... "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all
evidence that you ever tried."

~~~
drivingmenuts
Or just make it so banal on your resume no one will care to check.

"Tamed tigers for a circus" becomes "Shoveled cat poop".

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antoncohen
Here is the MP3:
[http://audio.wnyc.org/freakonomics_specials/freakonomics_spe...](http://audio.wnyc.org/freakonomics_specials/freakonomics_specials060511.mp3)

