“The time to quit is before you wish you had.”
― Kimberly K. Jones, Sand Dollar Summer
Annie Duke, the world renown poker player has a new book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. She was interviewed recently by Steven Levitt on his podcast, People I Mostly Admire.
Many of us find quitting is one of the hardest things to do, particularly in our culture which says “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
As I am writing, Kevin McCarthy is taking his 11th shot in three days to become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in spite of having been 20 votes short of success on each of the 10 previous votes. McCarthy was asked by a reporter last night, “Are there any circumstances under which you would consider pulling out of the race?”
“No,” he replied.
“Not one?”
“Not one.”
Now that may simply be necessary political posturing but it certainly does beg the question.
What would it take for Kevin McCarthy to abandon his ambition to be speaker. What would it take for him to quit and what would it cost him?
One of the things I have heard said about McCarthy is that he has dreamed of being speaker for all of his political career. For him to give up, to quit this dream, is to walk away from his very identity, the story he tells himself about who he is. It may be among very hardest things to do even when the cost of not doing so is complete and utter humiliation.
And it begs a question for us as well.
How do you know when it’s time to quit?
As I think back, many of the times I have called it quits have been pivot points in my life. The ones that were most difficult were the ones where I had to reassess who I was. The moment of quitting was scary but was followed almost immediately with a sense of relief, freedom, and even wonder. Invariably, quitting was the beginning of a new and better chapter.
Most of my ‘quits’ have been jobs. I have quit solid secure jobs, jobs I enjoyed, six times in order to change direction or seek new opportunities to learn. The last time (2020) was to leave the workforce entirely and face the final frontier, retirement (the scariest of all.)
I don’t regret any of these quits.
Often there are real barriers to quitting chief among them are fears such as:
Will I be able provide for myself and my family?
How will I use my time?
What will happen next?
Won’t I be throwing away all I have invested?
And (perhaps most often) who would I be if I didn’t do X?
The new year is a time traditionally associated with fresh starts, beginnings, and resolutions to change. Often these resolutions take the form of attempting to quit something. Quit smoking, quit alcohol, quit overeating, quit a toxic job, a destructive relationship, or other habits that we know do not move us toward our best selves.
Why is it so hard to make these changes?
One reason is that these habits, jobs, relationships serve our sense of self. After all aren’t we for the most part, the sum of the things we do more than the sum of the things we believe?
Perhaps the hardest component of change is figuring out what you are willing to say no to – what you will quit. Because as Duke, who herself quit a highly successful poker career, says, “the hardest thing to walk away from is who you are.”
What would you like to quit, to say no to, to walk away from in 2023?
How would you have to redefine yourself in order to succeed?
What would you need to become to walk away from who you are?