Dr. Annie Duke is a former professional poker player, an author, speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space. She is the author of the national bestseller, Thinking in Bets, and, the topic of today’s interview, 2022’s Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. “Quitting’s for the weak” reverberates through today’s culture. Of course, quitting just because something is hard is not a good idea. However, we don’t tend to evaluate whether what we spend our time on is worth “buckling down” for. We highlight the journey, not the destination when it’s really the destination that we should be focused on.
In our last episode (116), with Dr. Adam Alter, we mentioned Dr. Angela Duckworth’s Grit and Dr. Annie Duke’s Quit. Having already dived into Dr. Duckworth’s work with her in episode 21, I wanted to hear what might initially seem like a conflicting view.
Topics:
- Is quitting a counterargument or a compliment to grit?
- Strategies for assessing when to quit
- "Explore and exploit" mindset: how does that connect to quit and grit?
- How to apply exploring/exploiting seasons in life
- "What books have had an impact on you?"
- "What advice do you have for teenagers?"
Bio:
Annie loves to dive deep into decision-making under uncertainty. Her latest obsession is on the topic of quitting. In particular, she is on a mission to rehabilitate the term and get people to be proud of walking away from things.
Annie is an author, speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space, as well as Special Partner focused on Decision Science at First Round Capital Partners, a seed stage venture fund. Annie’s latest book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, was released in 2022 from Portfolio, a Penguin Random House imprint. Her previous book, Thinking in Bets, is a national bestseller. As a former professional poker player, she has won more than $4 million in tournament poker. During her career, Annie won a World Series of Poker bracelet and is the only woman to have won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the NBC National Poker Heads-Up Championship. She retired from the game in 2012. Prior to becoming a professional poker player, Annie was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2023 Annie completed her PhD in Cognitive Psychology at UPenn.
Annie is the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit whose mission is to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education. She is a member of the National Board of After-School All-Stars and the Board of Directors of the Franklin Institute.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Dr Annie Duke is a former professional poker player
, an author, speaker andconsultant in the
decision-making space.
She is the author of theNational Best Seller Thinking in
Bets and the topic of today'sinterview.
2022's Quit the power ofknowing when to walk away.
Quittings for the weekreverberates through today's
culture.
Of course, quitting justbecause something is hard is
(00:32):
definitely not a good idea.
However, we don't tend toevaluate whether what we are
spending our time on is reallyworth buckling down for.
We highlight the journey, notthe destination, when it's
really the destination that weshould be focused on.
This is the Aiming for the Moonpodcast and I'm your host,
taylor Bledsoe.
On this podcast, I interviewinteresting people from a
(00:53):
teenage perspective.
In our last episode, episode116, with Dr Adam Alter, we've
mentioned Dr Angela Duckworth'sgrit and Dr Annie Duke's quitt.
Having already discussed gritwith Dr Duckworth in episode 21,
I wanted to hear what at firstmight seem like a contrasting
opinion and Dr Duke's quitt.
If you like what you hear today, please rate the podcast and
(01:14):
subscribe.
You can follow us at Aiming theNumber 4 Moon on all the
socials to stay up to date onpodcast news and episodes.
Check out the episode notes forDr Duke's full bio and links to
our website,AimingForTheMooncom and our
podcast sub-stack Lessons fromInteresting People, as well as
the links to our conversationswith Dr Duckworth and Dr Alter.
Alright, with that, sit back,relax and listen in.
(01:37):
Thanks again to Paxton Page forthis incredible music.
Welcome, annie, to theinterview.
Thank you so much for coming onWell.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, so I just finished yourbook Quitt, which released last
October.
Is that correct?
Yeah, that's correct.
Okay, wonderful.
Which released last October,and it was a fascinating insight
into, I believe, acounter-cultural kind of
(01:58):
movement.
So of course, you have DrAngela Duckworth's book Quitt,
and this is almost acounter-argument to why you
should quit as well.
So, to kind of start off, whyshould we even consider this as
a topic to discuss?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah.
So I wouldn't necessarily sayit's a counter-argument to Quitt
, as a compliment to Quitt.
And the reason why is that youcan sort of look at this
decision that you have throughtwo frames, and the decision
that we have at any moment is,for anything that we've started
doing, should we keep doing itor should we stop?
(02:33):
And that, when you think aboutit, that stick or quitt decision
is actually it's one decision,right?
So if you stick to something,you're choosing not to quit it.
If you quit something, you'rechoosing not to stick to it.
So Angela's work happens tocome through the frame of what
the advantages of sticking tothings are.
(02:54):
That being said, she wouldn'tsay that you're supposed to
stick to things, period.
What she would say is you'resupposed to stick to things that
are worthwhile.
So then the question, of course, is and it's a pretty obvious
answer what are the things thatyou're like?
What are you supposed to dowith the things that aren't
worthwhile?
And the answer, of course, isto quit those.
(03:16):
So the reason why I really feltthe need to write this book is
that I think that our naturaltendency is to think that it is
a sign of character, of goodcharacter, to stick to things.
But it's so obvious, once youthink about it for a second,
that sticking to something thatisn't worthwhile like staying in
(03:36):
a job with a toxic boss right.
Or like if you go to college andyou choose a major and then you
start taking, you know, someclasses and you're trying your
hardest and you're putting inthe work and you have a tutor
and you're doing everything youcan and you hate it and you're
(03:56):
not doing well, why should youstick to that?
Right?
Like you've gotten informationthat you're miserable.
You shouldn't stay in thatsituation.
All sorts of situations like ifyou're in a relationship where
you're not being treated, whileyou obviously shouldn't stick to
it.
If you're climbing a mountainand the snowstorm comes in and
you don't have any visibilityand the conditions have become
(04:17):
dangerous, you shouldn't stickto it.
So, even though we can see thatit's obvious that there are
things that we shouldn't stickto, I still think that we see
quitting as like a sign of alack of character and sticking
to things as a sign of goodcharacter, and I felt like
somebody needs to write a booksaying, actually, you should be
quitting most things at somepoint and only stick to the
(04:39):
stuff that's worthwhile and thatset of stuff that's worthwhile
to stick to is actually going tobe pretty small.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, one of the things that was interesting is
we interviewed Dr Duckworthtowards the beginning of this
podcast and, of course, I'll askyou this question later on but
we asked her what advice do youhave for teenagers?
And we'd been talking aboutgrit.
The entire episode in WillPower and her advice to
teenagers was quit, which Ifound very unique, and she gave
a story behind why you should dothat and what you should focus
(05:07):
on, and I just thought, forsomeone who's studied all of her
life the science of Will Power,what are you need?
That's very unique advice, andso it's definitely something
that people kind of gloss overbecause it's not as good of a
headline as quit or somethinglike that.
Yeah, I think that you know?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I mean, I think that people really I mean I don't
want to speak for her, obviously, I already spoke to her, but I
think that people misinterprether work, right?
Which is they say, you know,they think she's saying you
should stick to things becausethat will create success.
And it's not as simple as that,right?
(05:47):
You know, it's not that youhave to just overcome hard
things and, like, stick withthem and then all of a sudden
you're going to be successful.
It's that you have to figureout is the thing that I'm doing
worth it?
Because if it's worth it, itshouldn't matter how hard it is.
I should be able to get throughthe hard stuff because the pot
of gold at the end of therainbow is sitting there for me
(06:10):
and I shouldn't give that up.
But if there's no pot of gold,there's no reason that you ought
to stick to it, right?
So we can think about, like ifyou're in high school, you know
a lot of kids struggle withalgebra.
It's like a really big hump andwhen we look at some of the
statistics on like dropout rates, they're occurring at the point
(06:30):
where people are confrontingalgebra Because it's really hard
.
Now, in this particular case,we can definitely you know
pretty definitively say gettingover that hump is worth it,
because the pot of gold at theend of that rainbow which is
your high school diploma iscertainly worth achieving.
It's going to create all sortsof benefits throughout your life
(06:53):
, and so the kids who have theability to grit that out and be
able to stick to it and actuallypass algebra are, on average,
like going to do way better thanthe kids who actually drop out.
So, like there, it's prettyobvious.
But you could imagine thinkingabout a sport, right, where you
try a certain sport and you hateit and you're not particularly
(07:15):
good at it, but you've given itenough time.
That it's not just that youdon't like it because you're a
beginner, right, so it's likethat balance, right, so you've
done, you've done enough of it.
That it's not just like I'm abeginner, I don't know what I'm
doing, so I hate it because Ifeel stupid.
You've actually put in the time, you've put in the work, you've
tried your best, and now thequestion is should you quit or
(07:37):
not?
And I think that Angela wouldcertainly say yeah, she'd say
yeah, let's go find somethingelse to do with that time.
That's going to actually bemore fulfilling.
So you know, but what happensis that and I hear this from
people all the time is like,well, why are you still doing
that?
If you hate it, they'll saybecause I'm not a quitter, right
, because we just sort of peopleinterpreters, work is saying
(07:57):
like grit is good.
But that is a way it's like wayoversimplified to say just grit
is good.
And you have to say is thisthing that I'm doing, that's
hard, that's taking you know?
That's where I'm having to usemy willpower to continue doing.
Is it, in the end, going to beworth it?
And if the answer to that isyes and it's not just is it
(08:20):
going to be worth it, but is itgoing to be worth it in
comparison to other things Icould be doing with that time?
Right, and if the answer is yes, it's going to be worth it,
then by all means like, then youreally need grit, and the
people who are grittier aregoing to tend to be more
successful because they're goingto be able to stick through
those hard times.
But quitting is just as much ofa skill that you have to
develop, and you know, and youknow you have to buck society in
(08:44):
order to do that, becausepeople will call you a quitter,
which, by the way, is not acompliment in our culture.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Then one of the questions that immediately
arises is what should I quitLike?
When I look at my life and Ilook at all the different areas
in which I'm spending my energyand my time, how do I know which
ones are worth continuing Like?
How do I think forward enoughin order to assess that?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah.
So this is actually a reallybig problem, because one of the
things that we know that we'rereally bad at is kind of
imagining how we're going tofeel about things in the future,
and hand in hand with that,separate from sort of imagining
how things are going to be inthe future.
We're bad at making decisionsin the moment that we're
(09:33):
actually facing the choice.
So the best analogy that I havefor that it's what?
So Daniel Kahneman would say,who's the Nobel laureate in
economics?
He would say we're bad atmaking decisions when we're in
it.
So what does in it mean?
Like?
The analogy I would have forthat is if you decided that you
want to eat really healthy, it'sreally hard to make a decision
(09:56):
about whether you want to eathealthy if there's cupcakes
sitting in front of you.
It's much easier to make thattype of decision if you've
decided in advance that you wantto eat healthy and then you've
done things about puttingyourself in positions to make
that easier in the future, sothat you're not deciding in the
moment that you see the cupcakesin front of you.
And so it's a lot of thinkingabout how do I advance plan, how
(10:23):
do I create pre-commitmentcontracts that are going to help
me stick to the things that Iknow that are worthwhile, and if
people are interested in thatworld of work, I think Katie
Milkman is a great resource.
She has a great book called howto Change and you can go sort
of see that idea of like youhave to be planning in advance.
So this comes for grit and quitdecisions as well.
(10:46):
So what we know is that whenwe're in the middle of something
and you're not, so we're nottalking here about children,
we're talking here about peoplewho are, you know, getting into
college age or older.
When you're in the middle ofsomething, we're going to have a
bias against stopping it.
So in the same way, we're goingto have a bias toward eating
(11:09):
the cupcakes If they're sittingright in front of us.
We're going to have a biasagainst stopping.
And there's all sorts ofreasons for that there and we
can cover some of them if youwant, but a simple one would be
the sunk cost fallacy, which isthat we feel like if we quit,
we'll have wasted our time orenergy or money or whatever
we've already put into theproject.
And you'll hear people say thatall the time.
(11:31):
I can't quit now because ofeverything I've already put into
it.
So when you're in the momentyou're going to, that's when
you're most vulnerable tofalling prey to something like
the sunk cost fallacy, which isgoing to make you lean toward
not quitting.
So how do you overcome sort ofwhat's happening when you're in
it, and that's to think inadvance.
(11:51):
So what I always recommend topeople who are facing down like
a stick or quit decision isdon't make the decision today.
Instead, imagine it's some timein the future, and that time in
the future would be determinedby how long you think it's
reasonable to continue to do thething that you're doing.
(12:12):
So let's say that you're let'ssay you're in a job you hate.
The first thing I would ask youis well, how long are you okay
with the status quo?
Like, how long are you kind ofokay, sort of putting up with it
?
So let's say they say twomonths.
So I'll say, great.
So two months from now, whatwould a good version of the
(12:34):
world look like?
So what?
How would things have had tohave changed where you would say
I'm happy in the situation thatI'm in, write down that list.
And then, two months from now,what would be the signals that
would tell you that things arestill really bad and write down
that list and then commit inadvance that in two months
(12:55):
you're going to assess this andyou're going to see what whether
you're sort of satisfying thegood version of the world or the
bad version of the world.
If you're in the bad version ofthe world, then you're going to
walk away.
So that's the simplest thingthat you can do.
It's employing something calledkill criteria.
So a really simple example ofkill criteria would be like for
(13:17):
mountain climbers.
They, in advance of ascending,they set what's called a
turnaround time, and theturnaround time is just a time
that, no matter where you are inthe mountain, whether you've
submitted or not, you'resupposed to turn around and go
back to where you came from, andthe reason is to stop you from
(13:37):
generally from descending themountain in darkness.
So, for example, on MountEverest, on summit day, they set
a turnaround time of 1pm.
It means, even if you're not atthe summit yet, even if you're
300 yards from the summit whichactually is quite far because
it's pretty steep, but doesn'tmatter you have to turn around
and you have to go back to thecamp that you came from.
(13:58):
But they're doing that so thatyou don't have to make the
decision in the moment whetheryou're supposed to continue or
not, and so, in advance, you'vealready got this plan that, at
1pm, you're going to turn around.
So you could imagine, like in ajob, if you're unhappy because
you don't, for example, like theway that the boss is
interacting with you, that youcould say if the boss is still
(14:21):
treating me in this way, andwrite down very specifically
what those things are, then I'mgoing to leave.
Now, what's really important,though, is that, when you make
that set of kill criteria, thatyou don't just sort of set the
kill criteria, fold your arms,sit back and wait, because you
do have agency in the world.
What you should say is okay, ifI look at this, and I look at
the bad version of the world intwo months, or the good version
(14:43):
of the world in two months, whatare the things that I need to
do in order to create the goodversion of the world?
So, if it's the way that yourboss is treating you, you need
to sit down and have aconversation with your boss.
You can't just sit there fortwo months and see let's see if
it continues this way.
Right, you have to actuallyfigure out what are the things
that I need to do to make itbetter.
(15:06):
So if we take the example ofpicking a major and let's say
that you're pre-med and you bumpup against organic chemistry
and you're really strugglingwith it and it's horrible and
you're thinking maybe Ishouldn't be pre-med, maybe I
shouldn't be dropping this class, maybe I shouldn't be doing
this, you should say, well,what's making me miserable?
(15:27):
Like maybe if I don'tunderstand the material, I'm not
getting good grades.
I'm kind of lost in class.
Okay, how long am I okay withthat continuing?
Let's say I'm willing to go tothe end of a month or maybe to
the end of the semester andactually try to complete the
class before I decide whetherI'm going to drop out of the
pre-med program or not.
Okay, so you set all of thosethings up, but then you have to
(15:49):
say what are the inputs that canhelp me?
And one of those would be can Ifind a tutor?
Am I going to office hours andtalking to the professor?
Am I getting a study guide?
Do I have a study group in theclass?
And then you have to createthat right, so you can't just
set the kill criteria and thensort of set it and forget it.
You have to say what are thethings that I need to be doing
(16:10):
that can help me realize thegood version of the world,
because if you don't do that,you don't actually know whether
it was worth it or not orwhether you were capable or not.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Another one of the interesting topics that comes up
in your book.
Then I've also read about indifferent works, such as Dr Adam
Alters' recent Getting Unstuckbook, and that's actually how I
found your work.
You mentioned in our interviewand there's a term that I hadn't
come across before.
It's the idea of exploring andexploiting.
You have different seasons ofyour life in which you explore,
(16:40):
and then in those alsoexploiting, where you say no to
things and kind of dive in.
So how does quitting and gritall connect to that idea?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, actually, angela Duckworth talks about
summer is for sampling, which isexactly what that is right.
Summer is for sampling stuffthat you want to try.
So the thing is, look, when wemake any decision, we're making
that decision under conditionsof uncertainty, meaning that
there's a lot of luck involvedin the way that things turn out,
(17:09):
and we're always making thedecision with limited
information.
So one of the things I thinkabout is when you go out on a
date right, like you're going ona date you don't really know
how it's going to turn out.
You don't know a lot about theother person.
You don't know if you're goingto be a good match.
You know all of those thingsright.
So that's made underuncertainty.
When you choose a major incollege, do you really know that
(17:30):
you're going to love that major?
Of course not.
You have some idea that maybeyou'll like it.
Where does the idea about whatyou're going to try come from?
Well, it comes from exploration, right, I'm going to sample a
bunch of different things.
Like in high school, I'm goingto think about I took lots and
lots of different classesbecause you're forced to, right,
you have to take, you have tosample from all sorts of
(17:50):
different disciplines and thatsampling is helping you to get
an idea of what is the thingthat I might want to concentrate
on.
All right Now.
So that's allowing you togather information about the
things that you might want tostart.
So it's like little smalls,like I go out on lots and lots
of dates, because then thathelps me figure out who I might
(18:12):
want to commit to.
But once we've committed tosomething like we've committed
to a job, we've committed to aproject or we've committed to a
sport what normally happens isthen we sort of stop the
sampling and generally that's abad idea.
So the reason why is that sortof twofold.
(18:35):
The first is that the world canchange and if you aren't
continuing to sample some otherthings, you're not going to be
able to react very well to theway that the world has changed.
And I think that we're seeingthis like, for example, with you
know what is AI going to looklike in terms of job
opportunities.
(18:55):
Right, you're committing to aparticular type of career and
there is some possibility thatthe main part of your career
might get displaced from AI.
We don't know, but those typesof displacements can happen and
we don't necessarily know thatthey're going to happen, right?
So there are all sorts of jobsthat people used to do in the
past that kind of like don'texist anymore.
(19:17):
And then there's all sorts ofjobs that exist now that didn't
exist in the past, which is whyyou kind of don't want to get
stuck in a rut.
You want to continue someexploration, because it's good
to have those plan Bs, but alsosometimes when you're exploring
things, you find out that youlike it better than the thing
that you actually committed to,right.
So you know, maybe during theyear you would really committed
(19:42):
to soccer as your sport in aparticular season, and during
the summer you did a bunch ofsampling of volleyball because
you were playing volleyball withfriends on the beach and you
really loved it.
It occurs at the same time assoccer, but you figured out you
liked it a lot better thansoccer.
So you actually then willswitch them out and you wouldn't
be able to do that if youhadn't done the sampling in the
(20:02):
first place.
So one of my favorite sort ofexamples of like what's the
power of sampling, right?
What's the power of explorationActually comes from forager
ants.
So forager ants.
So when you look at an antcolony entering into a new
territory, you'll see that theforager ants, which are the ones
(20:23):
that are supposed to go andfind the resources for the
colony, are kind of scatteredaround, and all the forager ants
are just like sort of millingabout right, and what they're
actually doing is exploring theterritory, trying to find food
sources.
So once an ant, one ant findssome food, it will bring that
food back to the colony, andwhen it's bringing the food back
(20:44):
to the colony, it lays down apheromone trail, and that
pheromone trail attracts otherants to it, and those ants will
then follow the pheromone trail.
So they'll follow it towherever the ant had come from,
and if there's still food there,they will also grab food, bring
that food back to the colony,and they'll also lay down a
pheromone trail.
So if it's a really good foodsource, you can see that the
(21:06):
trail that scent trail, chemicaltrail is going to get really
strong, and then the ants aregoing to start kind of going one
by one to wherever the food is,which is kind of that image
that we have of ants marchingone to one, one by one.
So if you actually, though, lookat a colony of the way, that
for it, sorry, if you actuallylook at the behavior of forager
ants, what you'll find is thatwell, yes, it's true that about
85% of the ants are going in asingle file, basically like back
(21:29):
and forth, to this food source.
About 15% of the ants are kindof wandering around what looks
like a, mostly, and the questionis like what's the deal with
those ants?
Why aren't they following thepheromone trail?
Are they like slackers?
What's the deal with them?
And it turns out what they'redoing is exploring, and this, of
course, is a really goodexample of what they're doing.
The balance of explore exploitis that you have 85% of the
(21:50):
colony who's that are exploringthe food source that has already
been discovered, but you have15% of the colony that's
continuing to explore for otherfood sources.
Why is that important?
Well, the food source thatthey're exploiting might go away
, and so you don't have to go tothe food source that's already
been discovered.
And that's how you have tothink about your own life.
(22:18):
Right, it's like I've got agood thing going, but that
doesn't mean that I shouldn't beexploring other opportunities
at the same time, becauseotherwise you can have the rug,
or you can have the plant, oryou can have the field, or you
can have the plant, or you canhave the plant, or you can have
the plant.
And that's a good exampleexploring other opportunities at
the same time, becauseotherwise you can have the rug
(22:40):
pulled out from under you also.
You might change Something thatyou used to love.
You might decide that you don'tlove and you might wanna end up
doing something else, and ifyou're not exploring, you're
gonna be left without anythingto go do instead.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
On a practical level.
So let's say we want to look atthe week and let's also put it
during the school year, becauseI am a student and so that's the
busiest time of the year and soyou've committed to all of
these different classes.
Do you have time to exploreduring those periods or how do
you fit this into a practicalkind of day by day, week by week
frame?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, so I mean, first of all.
I mean like again going to whatAngela Duckworth says like the
summer is for sampling, right?
So we recognize that kids arereally busy during the school
year.
They tend to be jam-packed intheir activities.
As you get older, you tend toalready have started
concentrating on things.
(23:38):
So there's an easy way to do itwith kids who are younger,
which is their after-schoolactivities should be across a
wide variety of things, and thathelps not just the child to
explore, but the parent to alsobe exploring along with the
child, so you can start tofigure out, like, what are the
things that your child reallylikes, what are the things they
don't like, so that after-schooltime is like really good for
(23:59):
that.
As you get older, into your highschool years, obviously you
tend to already be committing tosports or theater or whatever
it is that you like, but you dohave electives, and the
electives are a really goodmoment for exploration, where
you can start to explore things,and obviously that's a little
(24:24):
bit like how it's going to beonce you're sort of later in
your education and your Kthrough 12 education.
The summer is, though, a greattime for sampling, so you don't
necessarily need to be exploringand exploring at the exact same
time.
Sometimes that's very difficultto do, particularly because
you're only one person, you'renot a colony of aunts.
(24:47):
It's easier for a business todo because the business can have
a certain percentage of itsemployees exploiting something
that's going really well and acertain percentage exploring,
and that makes it a lot easier.
So it's about finding thosemoments.
So that's either going to bethrough after-school activities,
where you add in something thatyou haven't tried before,
through electives, where you'relooking for electives that are
(25:11):
going to broaden your horizons,and it's really good to try
something that you don't knowwhether you're going to like or
not, right, so, to try somethingnew, because you're going to
get a lot of information out ofthat.
I think one of the keys, though,to doing that is that if you're
going to do exploration,particularly when you're very
(25:34):
busy, you have to be really goodat quitting.
So the thing that you don'twant to do is sign up for an
expert care, for example, andthen, two weeks in, when you
figure out that it's not for youcontinue.
You want to quit and move on tosomething else.
So when you enter intosomething that you where you do
know that you're coming in withan exploratory mindset because
(25:56):
you think, well, I just want totry this and I want to see if I
like it.
You should set out prettyquickly, like right in advance
of starting it, you should setout what are the signals that
would tell me that I ought notto do this, and you should be
willing to quit and move on tosomething else.
So maybe you decide you'regoing to try a musical
instrument and turns out not foryou, okay, great, like, stop as
(26:19):
soon as possible and then moveon to something else.
And that's really important.
It's true, like you obviouslyread a lot of books.
I hate it when someone tells methat they read a book that they
hated, because I'm always likewell, when did you figure out
that you hated it?
Well, pretty early on.
Well, why'd you finish it?
Well, because I finished books.
Well, that's a waste of time.
(26:40):
You could have spent your timereading a book that you actually
liked, right, that was actuallygoing to teach you something.
So, whenever you, you know, andI would say, and I would say
that, like, reading books, forexample, is putting you in
exploration mode, right?
So, if you read a book andafter the first couple of
chapters, it's just not landingwith you.
Please put it down and don'tread the rest of it.
Even if it's my book, I don'twant you to waste your time with
(27:03):
it.
So, one of the things to be agood explorer, you also have to
be a very good quitter, becauseotherwise you end up going in an
exploration mode and thenyou're sticking to it, which
isn't really exploring, onceyou've discovered the
information that you don't likeit.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, another route of exploration is, yeah, reading
.
Of course I was going tomention that and then I found a
lot of interesting things byinterviewing people.
I got into like some AI stuffand programming after talking to
some AI people and that wasfascinating.
There are different outlets now, especially with the internet,
youtube and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
You can read YouTube, you can read substacks.
Just look at what people arewriting.
You can get things inbite-sized bits and it's really
nice because then you can sortof start to feel out like, is
this something that I want to gofarther on?
And I think that that is themost important thing.
But I'm sure, as you know fromwhat you do, it's like then you
(27:58):
have to be good at quitting,because you can't waste your
time on something, particularlyif it's long form writing.
I don't want you to watch a twohour YouTube that you started.
If after the first 20 minutesit's just not for you, Don't
finish it just because youstarted it, Because that's the
whole point of exploration isI'm going to poke around at
(28:18):
stuff to try to get informationabout the stuff that is
worthwhile for me to stick to.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Draw into a close.
Unfortunately, that books havehad an impact on you.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Okay, so it depends on what we're talking about
fiction or nonfiction, so littleknown fact.
I was like an English major incollege.
That was one of my two majors,and so there's lots of fiction
books that have had an impact onme.
I will stick to nonfiction forright now, though, the book that
I think is probably has thebiggest impact on me, and I wish
(28:54):
everybody would read, is SuperForecasting by Phil Tetlock and
Dan Gardner.
Just Phil Tetlock and Icollaborate together, so I just
want to say that for fulldisclosure.
But the thing about SuperForecasting is and obviously I'm
a little bit biased because itfits in with my worldview is
(29:16):
that it shows you how to thinkabout the world
probabilistically.
How do we think about, how do wepredict what is going to occur
in the future and actually getreally good at that.
And I think that that's one ofthe most important skills that
we can have, because, at itscore, every decision involves a
forecast of the future, and itreally ingrains in you that when
(29:38):
you start something, it is it'sboth predictable and
unpredictable what's going tohappen, in the sense that if I
flip a coin, I can tell you itwill land heads 50% or tails 50%
.
So that's predictable, but Ican't tell you what it's going
to land on the very next flip.
So in that sense it's kind ofunpredictable and it allows you
to understand that, like youknow, things are going to turn
(30:00):
out well, things are going toturn out poorly.
Your job is to be as good aspossible at predicting, across
the set of possible outcomes,what could occur, so that you
can make the best decisions andnot to get yourself too caught
up in like any one outcome thatoccurs.
And I think that, just in termsof training, the way that
somebody thinks superforecasting would be the book
(30:23):
that I would want everybody toread.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Huh, that's really interesting.
I'll definitely have to checkthat out.
It sounds like a very likeuseful and insightful book about
decision making.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah, it's really.
I mean it fits in with a lot ofthe work that I do.
But it's basically saying, like, look, when we're thinking
about anything from likemonetary policy, right, like
think about inflation, which wasso high last summer, right,
started really shooting up lastsummer and fall.
So let's say that you're thegovernment and you're trying to
(30:57):
think about what are theinterventions that we can do
that's going to bring inflationdown.
That's a forecast.
It's if I do this, I believethis is the effect that it will
have on inflation.
If I do this, I believe this isthe effect it will have on
inflation.
When you're thinking in highschool, right, as you're
thinking about, like, if Iapplied to this college, what's
the probability I'm going to getin?
(31:17):
How many colleges do I need toapply to?
What's the best type of essayfor me to write?
What's the type of college thatI even want to go to?
Do I want to go to a smallliberal arts college?
Do I want to go to a biguniversity?
Do I want to go to an IvyLeague?
Do I want to be in the north,the south, the?
You know the southwest, youknow that in California, like,
(31:38):
all of these things areforecasts, where you're trying
to predict what the state of theworld is going to be in the
future, given differentdecisions that you might make.
It is the absolute core skillthat you need to develop, and
Super Forecasting is an amazingbook for helping you to
understand that particularprocess.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Bridging off of that.
What advice do you have forteenagers?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Read Super Forecasting no.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
That's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know.
My advice to teenagers is itactually sort of fits in with
this is that be open-minded.
Don't Imagine you should betrying at this point in your
(32:25):
life.
You should be trying to keep asmany options open as possible.
And I think that when I talk toteenagers including my own
teenagers what I found was thatthey had a sense that they were
supposed to know what theywanted to do already and have
their future figured out rightLike to know.
(32:45):
Like this is what my career issupposed to be Like when you're
16, right Like that you know.
They get a sense that they'resupposed to know what their
future is supposed to hold.
And what I wanna say to them isbe comfortable in not knowing
Like.
This is the time that youcannot know, because I can tell
you it's.
(33:06):
You know you have no idea whatyou're gonna really like and not
like at 30 or 40 or 50.
And right now, at this point inyour life, you have this
amazing opportunity that'ssitting in front of you, which
is the luxury to be able to trya lot of different stuff with a
real open mind and to understandthat there is no reason
(33:28):
whatsoever that you should knowfor sure what you wanna do in
your future.
First of all, if you think youknow you don't and you'll find
that out when you're older,right, and you just, and also
it's like the future's prettyunpredictable anyway.
So, just like, keep youroptions open more.
And I think that you know, forme, when I was young, I kind of
(33:51):
felt that, right, I felt that Iwas supposed to have stuff
figured out.
And I look back on my life andit's just so hilarious that I
ever thought that I knew what Iwas gonna do, because, you know,
I went to college thinking, youknow, I was gonna probably end
up being a teacher.
I went to graduate school toend up doing that, and then I
ended up being a poker playerand then, from being a poker
(34:13):
player, I ended up being anauthor and then I ended up being
a business consultant.
Like, business was never in theset of things that I thought
that I ought to be doing.
And it turns out that I'm goodat it and I really like it and I
find it fulfilling.
So, yeah, and I feel like a lotof, even as an adult, I've just
always had an open mind toother opportunities and I wish,
(34:36):
when I was younger, I was moreopen-minded and explored more
stuff.
When I was in college, I wish Ihad taken a broader range of
classes, for example, but Ithought I had it figured out.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
What I find very compelling about that advice is
first off, it connects to yourwork.
It connects to Dr Duckworth'swork and, as well as another
guest, David Epstein's work onrange oh.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
I love David so much.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
It's so incredible, like that's one of the best
books really ever that I've read, and it's yeah, that's an
incredible book as well.
People check that out as wellas the interview.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Yes, please range is such a good book.
He's such a good writer, he'sso compelling.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
It's incredible, but that's also the number one
advice that I've heard across ahundred episodes of this podcast
is expand, try lots of things,explore.
You don't have to have itfigured out.
Actually, most of the people onthis podcast went into college
and switched their majorscompletely.
David Epstein mentions that inhis book and it's just something
(35:32):
that I think is oftenoverlooked in high school.
That apparently is a commonthing of advice, just not often
said.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, I mean.
So I feel like I was.
I actually was kind of luckybecause I went to Columbia,
which has a core curriculum, sothey force you to actually do
quite a bit of sampling becausethey have some pretty broad
requirements in philosophy,literature, art, music like so
and so forth, so I did have totry those.
The thing that I never tried,and nobody advised me to try,
(36:02):
was like anything that had to dowith business or finance or
anything like that, and it wouldhave never occurred to me that
I was supposed to be samplingthose things.
And I probably I mean inretrospect it's very clear that
I should have been samplingthose things.
So I just wish that, like if Icould go back and do college
(36:22):
over again, I would be taking amuch broader range of classes
beyond what the core curriculumwas asking me to do.
And that's always the advicethat I have for people is just
like sample, sample, sample,sample, sample.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Yeah Well, thank you so much for coming on the
podcast.
I really enjoyed ourconversation.
We spanned from quitting to whyyou should quit.
Tools, kill, criteria covered awide variety of things.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Dr Annie Duke is a former professional poker player
, an author, speaker andconsultant in the
decision-making space.
She is the author of theNational Best Seller Thinking in
Bets and the topic of today'sinterview.
2022's Quit the power ofknowing when to walk away.
Quittings for the weekreverberates through today's
culture.
Of course, quitting justbecause something is hard is
(00:32):
definitely not a good idea.
However, we don't tend toevaluate whether what we are
spending our time on is reallyworth buckling down for.
We highlight the journey, notthe destination, when it's
really the destination that weshould be focused on.
This is the Aiming for the Moonpodcast and I'm your host,
taylor Bledsoe.
On this podcast, I interviewinteresting people from a
(00:53):
teenage perspective.
In our last episode, episode116, with Dr Adam Alter, we've
mentioned Dr Angela Duckworth'sgrit and Dr Annie Duke's quitt.
Having already discussed gritwith Dr Duckworth in episode 21,
I wanted to hear what at firstmight seem like a contrasting
opinion and Dr Duke's quitt.
If you like what you hear today, please rate the podcast and
(01:14):
subscribe.
You can follow us at Aiming theNumber 4 Moon on all the
socials to stay up to date onpodcast news and episodes.
Check out the episode notes forDr Duke's full bio and links to
our website,AimingForTheMooncom and our
podcast sub-stack Lessons fromInteresting People, as well as
the links to our conversationswith Dr Duckworth and Dr Alter.
Alright, with that, sit back,relax and listen in.
(01:37):
Thanks again to Paxton Page forthis incredible music.
Welcome, annie, to theinterview.
Thank you so much for coming onWell.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, so I just finished yourbook Quitt, which released last
October.
Is that correct?
Yeah, that's correct.
Okay, wonderful.
Which released last October,and it was a fascinating insight
into, I believe, acounter-cultural kind of
(01:58):
movement.
So of course, you have DrAngela Duckworth's book Quitt,
and this is almost acounter-argument to why you
should quit as well.
So, to kind of start off, whyshould we even consider this as
a topic to discuss?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah.
So I wouldn't necessarily sayit's a counter-argument to Quitt
, as a compliment to Quitt.
And the reason why is that youcan sort of look at this
decision that you have throughtwo frames, and the decision
that we have at any moment is,for anything that we've started
doing, should we keep doing itor should we stop?
(02:33):
And that, when you think aboutit, that stick or quitt decision
is actually it's one decision,right?
So if you stick to something,you're choosing not to quit it.
If you quit something, you'rechoosing not to stick to it.
So Angela's work happens tocome through the frame of what
the advantages of sticking tothings are.
(02:54):
That being said, she wouldn'tsay that you're supposed to
stick to things, period.
What she would say is you'resupposed to stick to things that
are worthwhile.
So then the question, of course, is and it's a pretty obvious
answer what are the things thatyou're like?
What are you supposed to dowith the things that aren't
worthwhile?
And the answer, of course, isto quit those.
(03:16):
So the reason why I really feltthe need to write this book is
that I think that our naturaltendency is to think that it is
a sign of character, of goodcharacter, to stick to things.
But it's so obvious, once youthink about it for a second,
that sticking to something thatisn't worthwhile like staying in
(03:36):
a job with a toxic boss right.
Or like if you go to college andyou choose a major and then you
start taking, you know, someclasses and you're trying your
hardest and you're putting inthe work and you have a tutor
and you're doing everything youcan and you hate it and you're
(03:56):
not doing well, why should youstick to that?
Right?
Like you've gotten informationthat you're miserable.
You shouldn't stay in thatsituation.
All sorts of situations like ifyou're in a relationship where
you're not being treated, whileyou obviously shouldn't stick to
it.
If you're climbing a mountainand the snowstorm comes in and
you don't have any visibilityand the conditions have become
(04:17):
dangerous, you shouldn't stickto it.
So, even though we can see thatit's obvious that there are
things that we shouldn't stickto, I still think that we see
quitting as like a sign of alack of character and sticking
to things as a sign of goodcharacter, and I felt like
somebody needs to write a booksaying, actually, you should be
quitting most things at somepoint and only stick to the
(04:39):
stuff that's worthwhile and thatset of stuff that's worthwhile
to stick to is actually going tobe pretty small.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, one of the things that was interesting is
we interviewed Dr Duckworthtowards the beginning of this
podcast and, of course, I'll askyou this question later on but
we asked her what advice do youhave for teenagers?
And we'd been talking aboutgrit.
The entire episode in WillPower and her advice to
teenagers was quit, which Ifound very unique, and she gave
a story behind why you should dothat and what you should focus
(05:07):
on, and I just thought, forsomeone who's studied all of her
life the science of Will Power,what are you need?
That's very unique advice, andso it's definitely something
that people kind of gloss overbecause it's not as good of a
headline as quit or somethinglike that.
Yeah, I think that you know?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I mean, I think that people really I mean I don't
want to speak for her, obviously, I already spoke to her, but I
think that people misinterprether work, right?
Which is they say, you know,they think she's saying you
should stick to things becausethat will create success.
And it's not as simple as that,right?
(05:47):
You know, it's not that youhave to just overcome hard
things and, like, stick withthem and then all of a sudden
you're going to be successful.
It's that you have to figureout is the thing that I'm doing
worth it?
Because if it's worth it, itshouldn't matter how hard it is.
I should be able to get throughthe hard stuff because the pot
of gold at the end of therainbow is sitting there for me
(06:10):
and I shouldn't give that up.
But if there's no pot of gold,there's no reason that you ought
to stick to it, right?
So we can think about, like ifyou're in high school, you know
a lot of kids struggle withalgebra.
It's like a really big hump andwhen we look at some of the
statistics on like dropout rates, they're occurring at the point
(06:30):
where people are confrontingalgebra Because it's really hard
.
Now, in this particular case,we can definitely you know
pretty definitively say gettingover that hump is worth it,
because the pot of gold at theend of that rainbow which is
your high school diploma iscertainly worth achieving.
It's going to create all sortsof benefits throughout your life
(06:53):
, and so the kids who have theability to grit that out and be
able to stick to it and actuallypass algebra are, on average,
like going to do way better thanthe kids who actually drop out.
So, like there, it's prettyobvious.
But you could imagine thinkingabout a sport, right, where you
try a certain sport and you hateit and you're not particularly
(07:15):
good at it, but you've given itenough time.
That it's not just that youdon't like it because you're a
beginner, right, so it's likethat balance, right, so you've
done, you've done enough of it.
That it's not just like I'm abeginner, I don't know what I'm
doing, so I hate it because Ifeel stupid.
You've actually put in the time, you've put in the work, you've
tried your best, and now thequestion is should you quit or
(07:37):
not?
And I think that Angela wouldcertainly say yeah, she'd say
yeah, let's go find somethingelse to do with that time.
That's going to actually bemore fulfilling.
So you know, but what happensis that and I hear this from
people all the time is like,well, why are you still doing
that?
If you hate it, they'll saybecause I'm not a quitter, right
, because we just sort of peopleinterpreters, work is saying
(07:57):
like grit is good.
But that is a way it's like wayoversimplified to say just grit
is good.
And you have to say is thisthing that I'm doing, that's
hard, that's taking you know?
That's where I'm having to usemy willpower to continue doing.
Is it, in the end, going to beworth it?
And if the answer to that isyes and it's not just is it
(08:20):
going to be worth it, but is itgoing to be worth it in
comparison to other things Icould be doing with that time?
Right, and if the answer is yes, it's going to be worth it,
then by all means like, then youreally need grit, and the
people who are grittier aregoing to tend to be more
successful because they're goingto be able to stick through
those hard times.
But quitting is just as much ofa skill that you have to
develop, and you know, and youknow you have to buck society in
(08:44):
order to do that, becausepeople will call you a quitter,
which, by the way, is not acompliment in our culture.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Then one of the questions that immediately
arises is what should I quitLike?
When I look at my life and Ilook at all the different areas
in which I'm spending my energyand my time, how do I know which
ones are worth continuing Like?
How do I think forward enoughin order to assess that?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah.
So this is actually a reallybig problem, because one of the
things that we know that we'rereally bad at is kind of
imagining how we're going tofeel about things in the future,
and hand in hand with that,separate from sort of imagining
how things are going to be inthe future.
We're bad at making decisionsin the moment that we're
(09:33):
actually facing the choice.
So the best analogy that I havefor that it's what?
So Daniel Kahneman would say,who's the Nobel laureate in
economics?
He would say we're bad atmaking decisions when we're in
it.
So what does in it mean?
Like?
The analogy I would have forthat is if you decided that you
want to eat really healthy, it'sreally hard to make a decision
(09:56):
about whether you want to eathealthy if there's cupcakes
sitting in front of you.
It's much easier to make thattype of decision if you've
decided in advance that you wantto eat healthy and then you've
done things about puttingyourself in positions to make
that easier in the future, sothat you're not deciding in the
moment that you see the cupcakesin front of you.
And so it's a lot of thinkingabout how do I advance plan, how
(10:23):
do I create pre-commitmentcontracts that are going to help
me stick to the things that Iknow that are worthwhile, and if
people are interested in thatworld of work, I think Katie
Milkman is a great resource.
She has a great book called howto Change and you can go sort
of see that idea of like youhave to be planning in advance.
So this comes for grit and quitdecisions as well.
(10:46):
So what we know is that whenwe're in the middle of something
and you're not, so we're nottalking here about children,
we're talking here about peoplewho are, you know, getting into
college age or older.
When you're in the middle ofsomething, we're going to have a
bias against stopping it.
So in the same way, we're goingto have a bias toward eating
(11:09):
the cupcakes If they're sittingright in front of us.
We're going to have a biasagainst stopping.
And there's all sorts ofreasons for that there and we
can cover some of them if youwant, but a simple one would be
the sunk cost fallacy, which isthat we feel like if we quit,
we'll have wasted our time orenergy or money or whatever
we've already put into theproject.
And you'll hear people say thatall the time.
(11:31):
I can't quit now because ofeverything I've already put into
it.
So when you're in the momentyou're going to, that's when
you're most vulnerable tofalling prey to something like
the sunk cost fallacy, which isgoing to make you lean toward
not quitting.
So how do you overcome sort ofwhat's happening when you're in
it, and that's to think inadvance.
(11:51):
So what I always recommend topeople who are facing down like
a stick or quit decision isdon't make the decision today.
Instead, imagine it's some timein the future, and that time in
the future would be determinedby how long you think it's
reasonable to continue to do thething that you're doing.
(12:12):
So let's say that you're let'ssay you're in a job you hate.
The first thing I would ask youis well, how long are you okay
with the status quo?
Like, how long are you kind ofokay, sort of putting up with it
?
So let's say they say twomonths.
So I'll say, great.
So two months from now, whatwould a good version of the
(12:34):
world look like?
So what?
How would things have had tohave changed where you would say
I'm happy in the situation thatI'm in, write down that list.
And then, two months from now,what would be the signals that
would tell you that things arestill really bad and write down
that list and then commit inadvance that in two months
(12:55):
you're going to assess this andyou're going to see what whether
you're sort of satisfying thegood version of the world or the
bad version of the world.
If you're in the bad version ofthe world, then you're going to
walk away.
So that's the simplest thingthat you can do.
It's employing something calledkill criteria.
So a really simple example ofkill criteria would be like for
(13:17):
mountain climbers.
They, in advance of ascending,they set what's called a
turnaround time, and theturnaround time is just a time
that, no matter where you are inthe mountain, whether you've
submitted or not, you'resupposed to turn around and go
back to where you came from, andthe reason is to stop you from
(13:37):
generally from descending themountain in darkness.
So, for example, on MountEverest, on summit day, they set
a turnaround time of 1pm.
It means, even if you're not atthe summit yet, even if you're
300 yards from the summit whichactually is quite far because
it's pretty steep, but doesn'tmatter you have to turn around
and you have to go back to thecamp that you came from.
(13:58):
But they're doing that so thatyou don't have to make the
decision in the moment whetheryou're supposed to continue or
not, and so, in advance, you'vealready got this plan that, at
1pm, you're going to turn around.
So you could imagine, like in ajob, if you're unhappy because
you don't, for example, like theway that the boss is
interacting with you, that youcould say if the boss is still
(14:21):
treating me in this way, andwrite down very specifically
what those things are, then I'mgoing to leave.
Now, what's really important,though, is that, when you make
that set of kill criteria, thatyou don't just sort of set the
kill criteria, fold your arms,sit back and wait, because you
do have agency in the world.
What you should say is okay, ifI look at this, and I look at
the bad version of the world intwo months, or the good version
(14:43):
of the world in two months, whatare the things that I need to
do in order to create the goodversion of the world?
So, if it's the way that yourboss is treating you, you need
to sit down and have aconversation with your boss.
You can't just sit there fortwo months and see let's see if
it continues this way.
Right, you have to actuallyfigure out what are the things
that I need to do to make itbetter.
(15:06):
So if we take the example ofpicking a major and let's say
that you're pre-med and you bumpup against organic chemistry
and you're really strugglingwith it and it's horrible and
you're thinking maybe Ishouldn't be pre-med, maybe I
shouldn't be dropping this class, maybe I shouldn't be doing
this, you should say, well,what's making me miserable?
(15:27):
Like maybe if I don'tunderstand the material, I'm not
getting good grades.
I'm kind of lost in class.
Okay, how long am I okay withthat continuing?
Let's say I'm willing to go tothe end of a month or maybe to
the end of the semester andactually try to complete the
class before I decide whetherI'm going to drop out of the
pre-med program or not.
Okay, so you set all of thosethings up, but then you have to
(15:49):
say what are the inputs that canhelp me?
And one of those would be can Ifind a tutor?
Am I going to office hours andtalking to the professor?
Am I getting a study guide?
Do I have a study group in theclass?
And then you have to createthat right, so you can't just
set the kill criteria and thensort of set it and forget it.
You have to say what are thethings that I need to be doing
(16:10):
that can help me realize thegood version of the world,
because if you don't do that,you don't actually know whether
it was worth it or not orwhether you were capable or not.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Another one of the interesting topics that comes up
in your book.
Then I've also read about indifferent works, such as Dr Adam
Alters' recent Getting Unstuckbook, and that's actually how I
found your work.
You mentioned in our interviewand there's a term that I hadn't
come across before.
It's the idea of exploring andexploiting.
You have different seasons ofyour life in which you explore,
(16:40):
and then in those alsoexploiting, where you say no to
things and kind of dive in.
So how does quitting and gritall connect to that idea?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, actually, angela Duckworth talks about
summer is for sampling, which isexactly what that is right.
Summer is for sampling stuffthat you want to try.
So the thing is, look, when wemake any decision, we're making
that decision under conditionsof uncertainty, meaning that
there's a lot of luck involvedin the way that things turn out,
(17:09):
and we're always making thedecision with limited
information.
So one of the things I thinkabout is when you go out on a
date right, like you're going ona date you don't really know
how it's going to turn out.
You don't know a lot about theother person.
You don't know if you're goingto be a good match.
You know all of those thingsright.
So that's made underuncertainty.
When you choose a major incollege, do you really know that
(17:30):
you're going to love that major?
Of course not.
You have some idea that maybeyou'll like it.
Where does the idea about whatyou're going to try come from?
Well, it comes from exploration, right, I'm going to sample a
bunch of different things.
Like in high school, I'm goingto think about I took lots and
lots of different classesbecause you're forced to, right,
you have to take, you have tosample from all sorts of
(17:50):
different disciplines and thatsampling is helping you to get
an idea of what is the thingthat I might want to concentrate
on.
All right Now.
So that's allowing you togather information about the
things that you might want tostart.
So it's like little smalls,like I go out on lots and lots
of dates, because then thathelps me figure out who I might
(18:12):
want to commit to.
But once we've committed tosomething like we've committed
to a job, we've committed to aproject or we've committed to a
sport what normally happens isthen we sort of stop the
sampling and generally that's abad idea.
So the reason why is that sortof twofold.
(18:35):
The first is that the world canchange and if you aren't
continuing to sample some otherthings, you're not going to be
able to react very well to theway that the world has changed.
And I think that we're seeingthis like, for example, with you
know what is AI going to looklike in terms of job
opportunities.
(18:55):
Right, you're committing to aparticular type of career and
there is some possibility thatthe main part of your career
might get displaced from AI.
We don't know, but those typesof displacements can happen and
we don't necessarily know thatthey're going to happen, right?
So there are all sorts of jobsthat people used to do in the
past that kind of like don'texist anymore.
(19:17):
And then there's all sorts ofjobs that exist now that didn't
exist in the past, which is whyyou kind of don't want to get
stuck in a rut.
You want to continue someexploration, because it's good
to have those plan Bs, but alsosometimes when you're exploring
things, you find out that youlike it better than the thing
that you actually committed to,right.
So you know, maybe during theyear you would really committed
(19:42):
to soccer as your sport in aparticular season, and during
the summer you did a bunch ofsampling of volleyball because
you were playing volleyball withfriends on the beach and you
really loved it.
It occurs at the same time assoccer, but you figured out you
liked it a lot better thansoccer.
So you actually then willswitch them out and you wouldn't
be able to do that if youhadn't done the sampling in the
(20:02):
first place.
So one of my favorite sort ofexamples of like what's the
power of sampling, right?
What's the power of explorationActually comes from forager
ants.
So forager ants.
So when you look at an antcolony entering into a new
territory, you'll see that theforager ants, which are the ones
(20:23):
that are supposed to go andfind the resources for the
colony, are kind of scatteredaround, and all the forager ants
are just like sort of millingabout right, and what they're
actually doing is exploring theterritory, trying to find food
sources.
So once an ant, one ant findssome food, it will bring that
food back to the colony, andwhen it's bringing the food back
(20:44):
to the colony, it lays down apheromone trail, and that
pheromone trail attracts otherants to it, and those ants will
then follow the pheromone trail.
So they'll follow it towherever the ant had come from,
and if there's still food there,they will also grab food, bring
that food back to the colony,and they'll also lay down a
pheromone trail.
So if it's a really good foodsource, you can see that the
(21:06):
trail that scent trail, chemicaltrail is going to get really
strong, and then the ants aregoing to start kind of going one
by one to wherever the food is,which is kind of that image
that we have of ants marchingone to one, one by one.
So if you actually, though, lookat a colony of the way, that
for it, sorry, if you actuallylook at the behavior of forager
ants, what you'll find is thatwell, yes, it's true that about
85% of the ants are going in asingle file, basically like back
(21:29):
and forth, to this food source.
About 15% of the ants are kindof wandering around what looks
like a, mostly, and the questionis like what's the deal with
those ants?
Why aren't they following thepheromone trail?
Are they like slackers?
What's the deal with them?
And it turns out what they'redoing is exploring, and this, of
course, is a really goodexample of what they're doing.
The balance of explore exploitis that you have 85% of the
(21:50):
colony who's that are exploringthe food source that has already
been discovered, but you have15% of the colony that's
continuing to explore for otherfood sources.
Why is that important?
Well, the food source thatthey're exploiting might go away
, and so you don't have to go tothe food source that's already
been discovered.
And that's how you have tothink about your own life.
(22:18):
Right, it's like I've got agood thing going, but that
doesn't mean that I shouldn't beexploring other opportunities
at the same time, becauseotherwise you can have the rug,
or you can have the plant, oryou can have the field, or you
can have the plant, or you canhave the plant, or you can have
the plant.
And that's a good exampleexploring other opportunities at
the same time, becauseotherwise you can have the rug
(22:40):
pulled out from under you also.
You might change Something thatyou used to love.
You might decide that you don'tlove and you might wanna end up
doing something else, and ifyou're not exploring, you're
gonna be left without anythingto go do instead.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
On a practical level.
So let's say we want to look atthe week and let's also put it
during the school year, becauseI am a student and so that's the
busiest time of the year and soyou've committed to all of
these different classes.
Do you have time to exploreduring those periods or how do
you fit this into a practicalkind of day by day, week by week
frame?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, so I mean, first of all.
I mean like again going to whatAngela Duckworth says like the
summer is for sampling, right?
So we recognize that kids arereally busy during the school
year.
They tend to be jam-packed intheir activities.
As you get older, you tend toalready have started
concentrating on things.
(23:38):
So there's an easy way to do itwith kids who are younger,
which is their after-schoolactivities should be across a
wide variety of things, and thathelps not just the child to
explore, but the parent to alsobe exploring along with the
child, so you can start tofigure out, like, what are the
things that your child reallylikes, what are the things they
don't like, so that after-schooltime is like really good for
(23:59):
that.
As you get older, into your highschool years, obviously you
tend to already be committing tosports or theater or whatever
it is that you like, but you dohave electives, and the
electives are a really goodmoment for exploration, where
you can start to explore things,and obviously that's a little
(24:24):
bit like how it's going to beonce you're sort of later in
your education and your Kthrough 12 education.
The summer is, though, a greattime for sampling, so you don't
necessarily need to be exploringand exploring at the exact same
time.
Sometimes that's very difficultto do, particularly because
you're only one person, you'renot a colony of aunts.
(24:47):
It's easier for a business todo because the business can have
a certain percentage of itsemployees exploiting something
that's going really well and acertain percentage exploring,
and that makes it a lot easier.
So it's about finding thosemoments.
So that's either going to bethrough after-school activities,
where you add in something thatyou haven't tried before,
through electives, where you'relooking for electives that are
(25:11):
going to broaden your horizons,and it's really good to try
something that you don't knowwhether you're going to like or
not, right, so, to try somethingnew, because you're going to
get a lot of information out ofthat.
I think one of the keys, though,to doing that is that if you're
going to do exploration,particularly when you're very
(25:34):
busy, you have to be really goodat quitting.
So the thing that you don'twant to do is sign up for an
expert care, for example, andthen, two weeks in, when you
figure out that it's not for youcontinue.
You want to quit and move on tosomething else.
So when you enter intosomething that you where you do
know that you're coming in withan exploratory mindset because
(25:56):
you think, well, I just want totry this and I want to see if I
like it.
You should set out prettyquickly, like right in advance
of starting it, you should setout what are the signals that
would tell me that I ought notto do this, and you should be
willing to quit and move on tosomething else.
So maybe you decide you'regoing to try a musical
instrument and turns out not foryou, okay, great, like, stop as
(26:19):
soon as possible and then moveon to something else.
And that's really important.
It's true, like you obviouslyread a lot of books.
I hate it when someone tells methat they read a book that they
hated, because I'm always likewell, when did you figure out
that you hated it?
Well, pretty early on.
Well, why'd you finish it?
Well, because I finished books.
Well, that's a waste of time.
(26:40):
You could have spent your timereading a book that you actually
liked, right, that was actuallygoing to teach you something.
So, whenever you, you know, andI would say, and I would say
that, like, reading books, forexample, is putting you in
exploration mode, right?
So, if you read a book andafter the first couple of
chapters, it's just not landingwith you.
Please put it down and don'tread the rest of it.
Even if it's my book, I don'twant you to waste your time with
(27:03):
it.
So, one of the things to be agood explorer, you also have to
be a very good quitter, becauseotherwise you end up going in an
exploration mode and thenyou're sticking to it, which
isn't really exploring, onceyou've discovered the
information that you don't likeit.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, another route of exploration is, yeah, reading
.
Of course I was going tomention that and then I found a
lot of interesting things byinterviewing people.
I got into like some AI stuffand programming after talking to
some AI people and that wasfascinating.
There are different outlets now, especially with the internet,
youtube and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
You can read YouTube, you can read substacks.
Just look at what people arewriting.
You can get things inbite-sized bits and it's really
nice because then you can sortof start to feel out like, is
this something that I want to gofarther on?
And I think that that is themost important thing.
But I'm sure, as you know fromwhat you do, it's like then you
(27:58):
have to be good at quitting,because you can't waste your
time on something, particularlyif it's long form writing.
I don't want you to watch a twohour YouTube that you started.
If after the first 20 minutesit's just not for you, Don't
finish it just because youstarted it, Because that's the
whole point of exploration isI'm going to poke around at
(28:18):
stuff to try to get informationabout the stuff that is
worthwhile for me to stick to.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Draw into a close.
Unfortunately, that books havehad an impact on you.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Okay, so it depends on what we're talking about
fiction or nonfiction, so littleknown fact.
I was like an English major incollege.
That was one of my two majors,and so there's lots of fiction
books that have had an impact onme.
I will stick to nonfiction forright now, though, the book that
I think is probably has thebiggest impact on me, and I wish
(28:54):
everybody would read, is SuperForecasting by Phil Tetlock and
Dan Gardner.
Just Phil Tetlock and Icollaborate together, so I just
want to say that for fulldisclosure.
But the thing about SuperForecasting is and obviously I'm
a little bit biased because itfits in with my worldview is
(29:16):
that it shows you how to thinkabout the world
probabilistically.
How do we think about, how do wepredict what is going to occur
in the future and actually getreally good at that.
And I think that that's one ofthe most important skills that
we can have, because, at itscore, every decision involves a
forecast of the future, and itreally ingrains in you that when
(29:38):
you start something, it is it'sboth predictable and
unpredictable what's going tohappen, in the sense that if I
flip a coin, I can tell you itwill land heads 50% or tails 50%
.
So that's predictable, but Ican't tell you what it's going
to land on the very next flip.
So in that sense it's kind ofunpredictable and it allows you
to understand that, like youknow, things are going to turn
(30:00):
out well, things are going toturn out poorly.
Your job is to be as good aspossible at predicting, across
the set of possible outcomes,what could occur, so that you
can make the best decisions andnot to get yourself too caught
up in like any one outcome thatoccurs.
And I think that, just in termsof training, the way that
somebody thinks superforecasting would be the book
(30:23):
that I would want everybody toread.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Huh, that's really interesting.
I'll definitely have to checkthat out.
It sounds like a very likeuseful and insightful book about
decision making.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah, it's really.
I mean it fits in with a lot ofthe work that I do.
But it's basically saying, like, look, when we're thinking
about anything from likemonetary policy, right, like
think about inflation, which wasso high last summer, right,
started really shooting up lastsummer and fall.
So let's say that you're thegovernment and you're trying to
(30:57):
think about what are theinterventions that we can do
that's going to bring inflationdown.
That's a forecast.
It's if I do this, I believethis is the effect that it will
have on inflation.
If I do this, I believe this isthe effect it will have on
inflation.
When you're thinking in highschool, right, as you're
thinking about, like, if Iapplied to this college, what's
the probability I'm going to getin?
(31:17):
How many colleges do I need toapply to?
What's the best type of essayfor me to write?
What's the type of college thatI even want to go to?
Do I want to go to a smallliberal arts college?
Do I want to go to a biguniversity?
Do I want to go to an IvyLeague?
Do I want to be in the north,the south, the?
You know the southwest, youknow that in California, like,
(31:38):
all of these things areforecasts, where you're trying
to predict what the state of theworld is going to be in the
future, given differentdecisions that you might make.
It is the absolute core skillthat you need to develop, and
Super Forecasting is an amazingbook for helping you to
understand that particularprocess.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Bridging off of that.
What advice do you have forteenagers?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Read Super Forecasting no.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
That's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know.
My advice to teenagers is itactually sort of fits in with
this is that be open-minded.
Don't Imagine you should betrying at this point in your
(32:25):
life.
You should be trying to keep asmany options open as possible.
And I think that when I talk toteenagers including my own
teenagers what I found was thatthey had a sense that they were
supposed to know what theywanted to do already and have
their future figured out rightLike to know.
(32:45):
Like this is what my career issupposed to be Like when you're
16, right Like that you know.
They get a sense that they'resupposed to know what their
future is supposed to hold.
And what I wanna say to them isbe comfortable in not knowing
Like.
This is the time that youcannot know, because I can tell
you it's.
(33:06):
You know you have no idea whatyou're gonna really like and not
like at 30 or 40 or 50.
And right now, at this point inyour life, you have this
amazing opportunity that'ssitting in front of you, which
is the luxury to be able to trya lot of different stuff with a
real open mind and to understandthat there is no reason
(33:28):
whatsoever that you should knowfor sure what you wanna do in
your future.
First of all, if you think youknow you don't and you'll find
that out when you're older,right, and you just, and also
it's like the future's prettyunpredictable anyway.
So, just like, keep youroptions open more.
And I think that you know, forme, when I was young, I kind of
(33:51):
felt that, right, I felt that Iwas supposed to have stuff
figured out.
And I look back on my life andit's just so hilarious that I
ever thought that I knew what Iwas gonna do, because, you know,
I went to college thinking, youknow, I was gonna probably end
up being a teacher.
I went to graduate school toend up doing that, and then I
ended up being a poker playerand then, from being a poker
(34:13):
player, I ended up being anauthor and then I ended up being
a business consultant.
Like, business was never in theset of things that I thought
that I ought to be doing.
And it turns out that I'm goodat it and I really like it and I
find it fulfilling.
So, yeah, and I feel like a lotof, even as an adult, I've just
always had an open mind toother opportunities and I wish,
(34:36):
when I was younger, I was moreopen-minded and explored more
stuff.
When I was in college, I wish Ihad taken a broader range of
classes, for example, but Ithought I had it figured out.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
What I find very compelling about that advice is
first off, it connects to yourwork.
It connects to Dr Duckworth'swork and, as well as another
guest, David Epstein's work onrange oh.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
I love David so much.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
It's so incredible, like that's one of the best
books really ever that I've read, and it's yeah, that's an
incredible book as well.
People check that out as wellas the interview.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Yes, please range is such a good book.
He's such a good writer, he'sso compelling.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
It's incredible, but that's also the number one
advice that I've heard across ahundred episodes of this podcast
is expand, try lots of things,explore.
You don't have to have itfigured out.
Actually, most of the people onthis podcast went into college
and switched their majorscompletely.
David Epstein mentions that inhis book and it's just something
(35:32):
that I think is oftenoverlooked in high school.
That apparently is a commonthing of advice, just not often
said.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, I mean.
So I feel like I was.
I actually was kind of luckybecause I went to Columbia,
which has a core curriculum, sothey force you to actually do
quite a bit of sampling becausethey have some pretty broad
requirements in philosophy,literature, art, music like so
and so forth, so I did have totry those.
The thing that I never tried,and nobody advised me to try,
(36:02):
was like anything that had to dowith business or finance or
anything like that, and it wouldhave never occurred to me that
I was supposed to be samplingthose things.
And I probably I mean inretrospect it's very clear that
I should have been samplingthose things.
So I just wish that, like if Icould go back and do college
(36:22):
over again, I would be taking amuch broader range of classes
beyond what the core curriculumwas asking me to do.
And that's always the advicethat I have for people is just
like sample, sample, sample,sample, sample.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Yeah Well, thank you so much for coming on the
podcast.
I really enjoyed ourconversation.
We spanned from quitting to whyyou should quit.
Tools, kill, criteria covered awide variety of things.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, thank you so much for having me.
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