IS IT THE RIGHT TIME TO QUIT?

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Quitting has got a bad press. With quotes like “Never Give Up”, “Stick it out” and more, quitting is perceived as something negative. The message is - quitting means failure. You must always reach the finish line and must do everything to reach that goal.

However, throughout our lives, we are making decisions to quit all the time; whether it is a decision about our education, our career, our business, our life partner, kids or anything else. To choose something essentially means deciding to quit the rest. We may use different terms to describe it such as ‘necessary sacrifice’, ‘this just temporary’, ‘can do that later’, ‘just a few more years’, ‘need to focus on this right now’, ‘will wait for a year for that’ etc., but no matter what words or phrases we use, we are giving up something.

“Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quit the rest.” - Annie Duke

We choose our careers by picking out the one we want to pursue and giving up on the other possibilities. Steve Jobs decided to quit his education to start Apple. He may be an outlier but you can think of any example from people around; you’ll probably know someone who has quit something to make space for what they value or need. You yourself may have made the decision to change your career or your industry or practice area or your job. In extreme situations, when continuing becomes a hazard to life, quitting is the only thing that’s best for you.

For the lawyers reading this, even the process under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code is essentially a process about whether to quit and dissolve the business or to keep it a going concern with the aim to ensure that the highest economic value of the business is recovered at the right time.

This would make quitting at the right time an essential skill to have. It’s better to save your time and resources and put them to use doing something you want and value instead of continuing with a decision that a younger you made and turning a blind eye to everything else to make that possible. The necessary question is not if you should quit but when you should quit.

How our brain makes it difficult for us to quit

Knowing when to quit is not always easy. We have a number of cognitive biases that make us averse to quitting. We place too much value on the time, money and energy we have already invested in something. We want to avoid a loss. Quitting would mean all of that amounted to nothing. That we failed and are not good enough. There will be nothing to show for it.

Then there is the perennial question of “What will people say?” especially if the path you’re on is already an unconventional one. We believe other people will judge us if we decide to quit. This question makes us makes us work extra hard and increase our commitment instead of actually quitting and limiting our losses.

Sometimes we want to avoid the responsibility of making these decisions altogether and so we continue to follow the status quo and let the universe supposedly make decisions for us. Actively choosing something would mean we are responsible for it but if we let things be, then it’s not our fault how things turn out.

And then there’s always the ‘What if’. We don’t know what the future will be like. Quitting leaves an ambiguity about what would have happened if we continued. Would we regret quitting? Just what if it we do succeed? Quitting anything in life may not always reveal the answer to the ‘what if’.

All this makes quitting a hard decision. It’s not going to be perfect all the time but you’re more likely to maximize your returns (however you define it) if you quit at the right time.    

When is the right time to quit?

You may be wondering now, so how do I know when is the right time to quit then? It would be great if there was a magic formula that would just ring an alarm and tell us ‘It’s time!’ but unfortunately, that doesn’t exist. Though there certainly are some ways that can help the future you make the decision when it’s the right time.   

“Quitting on time can feel like quitting early.” - Annie Duke

As a general rule of thumb, quitting on time can feel like quitting early. You want to quit when you can maximize your gains or cut your losses but when you’re getting gains, it feels like more gains will continue and if you are making losses, it feels like, it’s just a phase and good times will follow. People investing in the stock market feel this way all the time while deciding when to sell their shares. In either case, it feels too early.

How can you stop this feeling of ‘too early’ distract you from quitting?

1.     Create a pre-determined kill criteria

When it’s really time to quit, we are worst placed to be making the decision to quit. Our cognitive biases hold us back from making this decision. But if we know our biases and how our brain thinks then can’t we try looking at it from a third person’s perspective?

The simple answer is no. Even knowing that we are bad at making this decision when we are in the middle of it does not make us any better at decision making. Research shows that we are no better at making decisions about quitting by thinking from an outsider’s perspective or assessing what would we have done if we were just starting to invest in or pursue this fresh right now. Just knowing is not enough.

There’s a problem - How can you quit at the right time when your brain won’t allow you to make a rational decision when it’s the right time to quit?

To get around this problem, we prepone the decision. We actually make the decision before we even begin. By creating a pre-determined kill criteria list. A pre-determined kill criteria is simply a list that mentions when you believe will be the right time to quit. It’s like writing a letter for your future self. The biases that hold you back are not there if you haven’t begun yet. Even if you’ve already in the middle of something, it’s better to make a list now that will guide your future self rather than not having one at all.

For every goal that you have, list out everything that will make this goal or pursuit not worth it anymore for you. Your values, priorities and needs play an important role here. What’s valuable to you may not be of value for someone else. That is why the decision to quit does not have a universal answer. Focus on what you want out of this goal. Why are you pursuing it? What’s your expected value from this? What will make this pursuit worthless? Then dig deeper. What would need to change (either your own values and priorities or something else in the world) for you to change your commitment to this decision? Imagine that the goal has failed in the future and think of the reasons why it would have failed. What signs or red flags will make you want to quit this goal?

If it helps, you can use this format – “I will pursue [goal] unless [1., 2., 3., 4., …..]

For eg., I will work in this job unless I don’t get a promotion by April 2026 or I start hating going to work 90% of the time or I need to be there for my family and move to a different city or I don’t learn anything new or don’t find anything challenging in my work for one full year or I get another job with a 40% salary hike and better designation or I’ve built my retirement fund or my organisation starts losing profits or starts making losses.

This list helps you make your goals more flexible. Instead of being fixed with your approach, you can change course when you need to while being within the bounds of the ‘defined goal’.  

“Inflexible goals aren’t a good fix for a flexible world” - Annie Duke

Now that you have your list, how do you get your future self to stick to it?

2.     Have a Quitting Coach

As new year resolutions have taught us, making a list is not enough. You don’t want it to get lost somewhere in the pages of a notebook. So, the next step is to follow up. Do regular check ins about where you are headed. Enter, the quitting coach.

Even with your list, quitting can still feel early. We believe we can turn things around. Success is just around the corner! We need help to ascertain the actual situation and a quitting coach can help us do just that.

A quitting coach doesn’t necessarily need to be an external coach but can be anyone who knows you well, can invest time for you and has your best interest at heart like a friend or family member. Your close people usually have a better understanding of where you’re headed so atleast listen to what they have to say. But make sure that the person is not just being ‘nice’. They should be able to ask you difficult questions and tell you the hard things even when you don’t want to hear them. Sometimes, our close ones don’t want to hurt us even when they know we are going in the wrong direction; those probably are not the people you want as a quitting coach.

But what exactly will the quitting coach do? How can you be the quitting coach for your loved ones?

The coach asks you relevant questions about your goals to help you evaluate how things are going and whether any kill criteria have been activated. The coach does not tell you or force you to do things but regularly makes you revisit your list and helps you notice if you’re falling prey to false progress by focusing on the easy things and ignoring the hard and critical problems. For eg. an entrepreneur who focuses on the branding and marketing of their app before they even have a concrete business idea for about what the app does and what problem it solves. If you decide to amend your goals, the coach helps you define a state and timeline for the change. They help you take the hard decisions when you need to.

I hope this helps you in making the decisions that are proving to be harder than the rest. We gain more knowledge and know more now than what we knew when we started. We can revise our goals if that’s the pivot we need to keep going and we can quit if the goal no longer meets our expected value. The skills, knowledge and lessons we learn along the way are valuable and not everything is lost. Persevering for anything and everything or quitting everything at the first sight of a challenge are extremes. The trick is to find the right thing to persevere for and quit the rest at the right time. Quitting is not failing but is a faster way to get to what’s important to you.

This entire piece is completely based on the book 'Quit- The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away' by Annie Duke. I've tried to summarise the key points to the best of my ability to help my readers leave with some practical actionable points but if you get the chance, I highly recommend it as a must read for everyone!