Why quitters are heroes with “Quit” author Annie Duke

"Securities"

They say that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, but what if each shot costs money and is actually a tradeoff with taking a different shot? Time and money are limited, and that means we must constantly balance investing in our current projects and ideas against seeking out new opportunities. While there has been prodigious work published on how to find the “next big thing”, few researchers have investigated what it takes to just throw in the towel, jump ship, fold and quit in the face of a bad situation.

Joining us on “Securities” today is Annie Duke, a World Series of Poker champion who researches cognitive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She recently published her new book “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away,” which explores the nature of quitting, the cognitive challenges in confronting loss, and the tactics required to identify when to quit — and how to do so.

In conversation with Lux Capital’s own Josh Wolfe, the two discuss the challenges of walking away, why professional poker players are better at quitting than amateurs, the geopolitics of war, and the importance as always of premortems for quitting.