Life Kit - Quitting isn't always bad. How to know when it's time to walk away

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Quitting is often associated with failure. But choosing to walk away from a goal can help you save time, identify what you truly want and create space for other pursuits. This episode, how to evaluate your goal, figure out its cost and know when it's time to throw in the towel.For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekitSign up for our newsletter here.Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [e-mail] the show and listen to it sponsor-free by signing up for Life Kit+ at plus.npr.org/lifekitLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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You're listening to LifeKit from NPR. Hey, it's Mariel. Raise your hand if you've heard one of these sayings. Don't be a quitter. Winners never quit and quitters never win. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. There's all this stuff around quitting that makes it seem cowardly. This is Annie Duke, a cognitive psychologist, a decision strategist, and a former professional poker player.

She wrote a book called Quit. She says, we tend to think about quitting as a failure. Even though it's not failure, if you're doing it in a situation where you ought to be walking away, that's a success. Because you've stopped spinning your wheels or wasting your time, and you get to go do other things that you'll enjoy more or that bring more value to your life. But how do you know when it's one of those situations, when it is time to walk away? Or as Angela Duckworth puts it, when to grit and when to quit. Angela is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. She pioneered academic research on grit, which she defines as a mix of passion and perseverance that allows people to achieve their long-term goals.

It has to be that sometimes it is better to quit. It's not that 100% of the time we should persist, right? Angela knows a mountain climber who has scaled some of the highest peaks in the world. And one of the things that he and other people like him have said is that one of the most important things to know, a mountaineer, is when you should turn back from the summit before you've reached it. On this episode of Life Kit, how to know when to quit something. That could be a career path, your pursuit of a particular goal, a relationship. It could be lots of things. We're going to give you the tools to evaluate your goals and figure out what they're costing you

and whether it's worth persisting. When we were in the studio, Annie Duke, the cognitive psychologist, posed a question to me. Feel free to play along here. I want you to imagine, tell me a band that you like. I said Olivia Dean, the neo-soul singer. So Annie tells me, imagine a band. Olivia Dean is coming to town. She's doing an outdoor concert in Central Park.

Do I want to go? Yeah. But then the day of the concert, I actually don't have a ticket yet. And there's a freak weather event. And it's like sleeting, inhaling, icy rain, freezing cold. It's like 15 degrees out. It's so cold. And there's not no cover.

Like they're not moving inside. It's still going to be outside. And I call you up and I'm like, hey, I know you like, Olivia Dean. I bought a ticket to go to this concert. I won't go because of the weather. But do you want my free ticket? No. No. Now she says, imagine same situation. Olivia Dean is coming to town and doing an outdoor concert. But I did buy a ticket and it cost me 500 bucks. Are you still so sure that you're not going? No, I'd probably consider it more. Right. I'd probably be like, oh, well, I could wear like a snow suit, I guess. Yeah.

Because you don't want to waste the $500. Right. But have you already spent it? The point is, I said I didn't want to go to the concert when it was free because I'd made the calculation that it wasn't worth the misery of standing in that weather. In the second scenario, the fact that I'd already spent $500 shouldn't have changed that. But our brains are funny that way. By the way, this is a concept known in economics as the sunk cost fallacy. The fallacy is, thinking you. should stick with something just because you've already put a lot of money or time or effort into

it. Stated another way, and I'm pretty sure I saw this on a quote card on social media, if you dig a hole in the wrong place, digging deeper is not going to help. So how do we know if we're digging in the right place? Takeaway one, the fact that you're seriously thinking about quitting is a sign in itself. Annie has talked to a lot of people about quitting, and she hasn't met many adults who say they quit something too soon. Usually they say they stuck around with something or someone far past that situation's expiration date. Adults always feel like they quit too late, and what that means is that you're quitting too late. Again, our culture defines quitting as a failure, which means we're biased against it. So Annie says when the thought of quitting

comes into your mind, especially repeatedly, you should take that thought seriously and set a deadline. Let's say your goal is to have a second child. You've had trouble. conceiving, so you tried IVF in vitro fertilization. You've gone through several rounds. Your body hurts. You're mentally and emotionally exhausted. And you're too tired to spend quality time with the kid you have. You don't know if you should keep going. She says start with that deadline. It could be, I'm okay trying for another year. It could be, I'm okay investing this much more money in this. It could be, I'm okay giving it two more cycles. or three more cycles. But you have to have a deadline and you have to figure out what that deadline is

for you. A deadline gives you time to come up with a plan and build an off-ramp if you need it. For instance, if you want to quit your job but can't afford to, you can start pursuing other work or other careers while you're in your current position. A deadline also gives you a chance to ask yourself some important questions. And that's takeaway two. Interrogate your goal. Put it under the microscope. One of the questions you'll want to ask yourself is why do I want this thing? Colin Rocker is the founder of For the First, a meetup club for first generation professionals. He also started a career education platform at Career Colon that teaches those professionals

how to navigate a workplace that wasn't created with them in mind. And he quit something about a year ago. He quit the pursuit of a corporate 9 to 5 job and started his own business. Now, Colin had never wanted to be a business owner. His dad was an entrepreneur. He owned a plumbing business, and it was not easy. We got evicted, and we had all these other financial troubles, and that's what I associated a lot of pain with running your own business,

which wasn't exactly unfounded, but it drove me into pursue a more traditional career for myself that was corporate and more and more white color. But then last year, Colin lost his job, which kind of poked a hole in his logic that a 9-to-5 gig was a guarantee of financial stability. And at that moment, he also realized he was pursuing this career path

for another reason. I was chasing a certain idea of how I wanted to be perceived, and I wanted to be perceived as successful. I wanted to be perceived as somewhat, you know, powerful and influential, right, in some ways. And I thought that if I could stack the right mix of titles and salaries

and company names on a LinkedIn profile or on a resume, I would somehow, not even really feel whole, but just be perceived as someone who had gone out and made something for themselves. And I wanted that perception of significance. So Cohen's advice for you

is to think about why you're on a particular path. Be honest with yourself and ask, are you the same person who set this goal? A lot of times people go about certain things, whether this is joining a sports team, declaring a certain major, starting a relationship, starting a job or career path.

and they get further down the line and the original intention for whatever reason has now completely fallen to the wayside and they're doing something more out of inertia than intention. Another question to ask yourself is who are you afraid of disappointing

if you quit this thing? That could be a parent or a coach, a professor, or a group of friends, a partner. People come to me sometimes for career advice, right? Which I'm always happy to give. And they explain this whole situation where they're clearly, clearly not passionate about what they're doing for work.

They don't want to continue doing it, but they feel drawn to it or they feel like they have to do it because of someone else's perception of them or what it means to someone else. On that note, another important question when you're thinking about quitting something is how passionate am I about this goal? Angela Duckworth, who studies grit, defines it as the combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals. And she says the passion part is really important. Because, yeah, if you want to reach a goal, you've got to be deliberate, you've got to put in the reps. But what are you putting the reps in about?

I mean, what are you practicing? It should be something that grabs your attention without you're forcing your attention to that object. In her classes, Angela will tell students, grit is about working hard. But before you get working hard, I want you to learn to choose easy. I want you to choose to do something with your life starting today that spontaneously grabs your attention, puts you into the flow state. I want you to do something where you feel this resonance with like who you are when you are at your best, your personal values. If you can help it, don't choose a career or a hobby or a lifestyle or a path where you're going to be hating every moment. Choose things where you're like, what? I get to think about this. I get to talk about this. I get to hang out with

people who want to do this. And by the way, when I do this, I really feel in some moral way that this is my best self that I can give to the world. Okay, one more question to ask yourself as you decide whether to quit something. Is this goal realistic? Takeaway three is to gather the data about your goal. Depending on the goal, Annie Duke says, there are different ways to gather data and figure out your individual chance of success. Let's say you're 15 and you want to be a pro skateboarder. I can actually look and say, when I look at people who have made the pros, where were they at 15 or where were they after the amount of practice and coaching and so on and so forth that

we have actually put into this up to this point? Or if we take the IVF example, your fertility clinic could provide stats on how likely success is at your age and given your situation. Then you can decide for yourself, what is my appetite for risk? Am I okay if I have a 10% chance? Am I only okay if I have a 50% chance? Am I only okay if I have an 80% chance? You also want to figure out what this goal is costing you. How much money are you spending in pursuit of this dream or this path? Is it affecting your health? Are you miserable? Are you unable to sleep? I can't tell you the amount of times I've shown up to jobs that I ended up leaving where I could feel the tightness in my chest.

I've lost hair. I've grown gray hairs. Also, think about what else you could be doing with your time. This is another concept from economics called opportunity cost. It's always a question of like, could I be doing something better? Other than applying to vet school again, you know, going through another IVF cycle, trying to get that interview or that internship. It's invisible. It's like the thing that you're not doing. So it's not the center of your attention. So think about what quitting could free you up to do and really allow yourself to daydream. It's like making way for a new growth if you think about like a, you know, a garden or maybe you're played at a buffet, right?

It's like if you have too much stuff going on, there's no room for anything new to come into your life. And so I found that when I created that space, it allowed other things to come into my life. Like my role now as a father, even starting the community and all these other beautiful things. things I've been able to do. There just wasn't a lot of space for that in the life I was living. Okay, takeaway four. If you're thinking about quitting something and you're still stuck, ask a couple people you trust. Should I keep doing this? Annie says we've all been in situations where we look at someone else, you know, they're in a relationship or they're in a job or they're pursuing something and we're thinking, what are you doing? They're coming and complaining to you and

like, I hate my partner and I want to leave. And then you see them six months later. And you're like, so how's that going? And they haven't done anything about it. And you're like, man, they should really just quit. The reason we can be so level-headed in these situations, Annie says, is that we don't carry around all the baggage they do. We're not carrying around their sunk costs all the time they've invested in this relationship or career path or whatever else. So you can see that situation much more clearly than they can. So guess what? Other people can see your situation more clearly than you can. So the advice here, recruit other people to help you. Mentors, peers, friends. Angela is currently writing her second book. And ironically, she has really wanted to quit

at times. So she asked her husband and a couple of close friends, should I? They say no. Keep going. but she says if everybody's telling you the opposite when there is a chorus of people who care about you and know you who say I think you should give up and do something more valuable with your time you know I think you should listen when you talk to these trusted advisors Annie says make sure you tell them be honest with me tell me what I need to hear

not what you think I want to hear because I want to know the truth for myself because I care about you know if you're 22 I care about 30 two-year-old me, I don't care about whether you think you're hurting my feelings right now. So big picture here, we're not saying you should quit that thing. That only you can decide. But we would love it if you gave yourself permission to quit things in general when that's the right choice for you and to make space for whatever's next, to give yourself the opportunity to bloom. It felt for me like a smaller existence before I'd quit this identity that wasn't necessarily serving me in every way it could.

but I feel like I'm much more filled up person, and I feel like I'm showing up better for my friends, I'm showing it better for my family, and in my work because I feel more fulfilled by it. Okay, time for a recap. Takeaway one. Given our culture's bias against quitting and the way people act like quitting equals failure, the fact that you're still thinking about it is something to take seriously. You may not be ready to quit today, but set yourself a deadline to make the decision. Takeaway 2. Interrogate your current path or goal. Ask questions like, why do I want to do this thing? Or why am I doing this? Am I the same person who set this goal? Am I just sticking with this because I'm afraid to disappoint my parents or my partner or someone else? Am I passionate about this goal? And is this goal realistic?

Takeaway 3. Gather the data. Figure out your likelihood of success and whether you're comfortable with that. Also think about what pursuing this goal is costing you. in terms of time, money, stress, and opportunity cost. That's all the stuff you're not doing because you are doing this. And takeaway four, if you're thinking about quitting something and you're still stuck, ask a couple people you trust for their opinion. One more tip from Annie Duke before we go. From now on, when you set goals, make a list of unlesses. So what that means is that I'm going to go for this thing, unless.

I'm going to try to be a pro skateboarder. unless I keep getting seriously injured. I'm going to try to have another kid this year, unless I lose my job. I'm going to join the circus, unless I don't love it anymore. Think of this like a little contract with yourself that could make it easier to quit when the moment is right. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We've got one on how to focus your attention and another on how to make resolutions you will keep. You can find those at NPR.org slash Life Kit.

And if you love LifeKit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash LifeKit newsletter. Also, if you have episode ideas or you just want to say something nice to us, email us at LifeKit at npr.org. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Gereeb. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Claire Marage, Snyder and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Robert Rodriguez. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.