Grit or Quit?

Should I quit? Advice from Annie Duke on when to walk away from a creative project.

Question: Should I set aside my novel-writing dreams to focus on writing a non-fiction book that could boost my business and pay the bills?

I’m in the trickiest stage that author Elizabeth Gilbert once wrote about:

“It seems obvious that there comes period in your life when you have to learn to say no to things you don't want to do. But the biggest trickiest lesson in holding on the stalwart commitment to your creativity is learning how to say no to the things you do want to do.” Elizabeth Gilbert

I really want to write this novel, but is it time to say no to fiction? Should I quit? I turned to Annie Duke’s book Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away for answers.

Grit or quit?

We live in a society that celebrates grit. But, as Duke writes, the opposite of a great virtue is also a virtue. She says the funny thing about grit, is that:

“While grit can get you to stick to hard things that are worthwhile, grit can also get you to stick to hard things that are no longer worthwhile. The trick is in figuring out the difference.” Annie Duke

As someone who is Team Grit, perseverance and persistence are my core skills. I’m a completer finisher. But the resilience that helps me finish hard things also means I keep going with things I should probably abandon. Grit is my superpower and my nemesis.

A bias against quitting

There are multiple cognitive biases that blind us to the value of quitting. Take loss aversion, where the emotional impact of a loss (such as giving up on a lifelong dream to write a novel) is greater than the impact of an equivalent gain (having time to write my non-fiction book).

The problem when deciding whether to persist with a creative project is that the only way to know absolutely whether it will succeed is to continue with it. We don’t have data on the projects we quit, they are hidden, out of sight and mind. All we have are what-ifs, hypotheticals and counterfactuals.

What Duke sets out to do in her book, and in her work as a decision-making consultant, is give us tools to decide whether and when to quit. In addition to rock-solid research, her advice is shared through compelling stories across all aspects of life from business to sport and creativity.

5 Tips on how to quit from Annie Duke

Here are a few ideas that struck me and I hope you find helpful. That doesn’t make them easy! Some of this advice is challenging, particularly the first one which goes against so much advice on getting started.

1. Do the hardest thing first

I spend a lot of time helping people to break down goals into small achievable steps. Research backs this up - starting small is a sure way to beat perfection, build a habit, and shift from doing nothing to making progress.

Duke doesn’t disagree, but gets us to switch perspective from starting to finishing. She shares examples of large engineering works and businesses that end up costing more because they made rapid progress on the small easy jobs rather than seeing if they could do the hard part. Because of ‘sunk costs’, once we begin investing time (and/or money) in a project we’re more likely to doggedly continue, even when the costs of keeping going escalate or finishing becomes impossible. Doing the hardest thing first means you figure out whether it’s worth your time.

2. Find your kill criteria

Because we hate abandoning projects once they’re underway we need reasons to decide, ideally set in advance.

Duke calls these ‘kill criteria’ literally, a set of criteria for ‘killing’ a project. She advises: “Ask yourself, ‘What are the signs that if I see them in the future, will cause me to exit the road I’m on?’”

These signs are your kill criteria and become one of the best tools for figuring out when to quit.

3. Enlist a quitting coach

We make poor decisions when it comes to things we hold dear, such as aspects of our identity or our deeply held values. This tendency is especially pronounced for those of us who lean towards optimism, adopting a Pollyanna-like outlook (*hands up*). Research shows that while being optimistic makes us more determined to stick with hard things, for longer (yay!), it does not increase our chance of success (boo).

Duke suggests we enlist a quitting coach who can assess our situation more rationally. The best quitting coach is someone who loves you enough to look out for your long-term well-being yet willing to tell you the hard truth even if it means hurting your feelings in the short term. While I love my friends to cheer me on I also need ones who call me out.

4. Add ‘unless’ to a goal

Goals are amazing motivators - simply having one in place will increase commitment and help us accomplish more than we thought possible. Therein lies their fault.

I’ve been using this tip every single day in my own writing and with coaching clients. It reminds me of Professor Gabrielle Oettingen’s WOOP where any plan addresses obstacles. For my writing this looks like: I will write every morning at 8am unless I have a client call.

Your ‘unless’ might be work, family commitments, health. Acknowledging what gets in the way and making it part of the goal has transformed how I feel about progress. In short, it gave me permission to be kind to myself when I can’t meet my plan.

5. Imagine the future

Time travel a year ahead to check whether things will change. The examples given for this were mostly workplace-based, something we can all relate to, being stuck in a job waiting for a pay rise or for our rubbish boss to leave. Are you OK with the situation for another 12-months?

This thought experiment helps you confront the reality and question whether you’re prepared to stick with it. Grit and quit are two sides of the same decision so sticking with the status quo is an active decision to not quit.

Do you quit? How? I’d love to hear

If it feels like we are quitting too early, Duke says that it’s probably the right time. Most of us are not used to quitting, it feels kind of wrong. Our own feelings are not the best guide as they’re subject to all sorts of societal pressures and psychological biases. Anything that gives us perspective will help.

Tell me what tools you use. Do you have a friend that calls time on your sunk ideas or have you honed your intuition to act on inklings and walk away?

Finally, did reading this post make you feel as uncomfortable as it did for me to write? Wish me luck as I consider my commitment to writing my novel.