As women, we are constantly told, "don't give up:" Don't give up on love, don't give up on believing in your dreams, don't give up on getting that dream job.
But what if cutting your losses and walking away is your best option? A recent Freakonomics podcast explored the "upside of quitting," showing that all those messages about "waste not, want not" may just waste more of your time -- and actually harm your health.
The "sunk-cost fallacy" is the false belief that you can't quit something because you've already invested too much time, energy, or other resources towards it, rather than recognizing it as a lost cause and walking away. And many, many of us are susceptible to this fallacy: How many times have you stayed in a job you knew was wrong for you telling yourself you'd learn to love it? How many times have you hung on to that bad relationship, hoping the person would change after all those years you invested in trying to make it work?
Even more disconcerting is the fact that our proclivity to keep pursuing failed experiments isn't ingrained -- it's something we develop somewhere along the way. A study conducted by Hal Arkes and Peter Ayton found that children and animals don't fall for the sunk cost fallacy, implying it's something we are conditioned to accept.
The "sunk cost fallacy" doesn't just apply to your wallet. Iris Krasnow, author of The Secret Lives of Wives, was about to get her wedding dress altered and on a vacation with her husband-to-be when she realized the man she was about to marry wasn't right for her. Ultimately, she realized the material cost of plane tickets and printed invitations couldn't outweigh the emotional costs of marrying someone wrong for her, and so she "quit" before the wedding. She is now happily hitched to a man she adores and with whom she has raised four sons.
Krasnow isn't alone. We tend to feel so much shame around quitting anything -- a job, a book club, even a yoga class -- but if you look around, you probably know more "quitters" than you think, and they're probably doing okay. Over on BNEt, Suzanne Lucas reacted to the Freakonomis podcast by describing her own personal story of becoming a "quitter." Lucas described how, from a young age, she was determined to be a political science professor. She attained her masters and received a full scholarship to a top Ph.D. program before realizing it wasn't the path for her and would never make her happy. In her post, she mused: "What if I stuck it out? And then wanted to change careers? It would have been harder to move into an entry-level Human Resources job with a Ph.D. than with a master's degree." Lucas says she is happy that she quit and became a writer, and while it was difficult to walk away from her former dream, she's glad she cut her losses before even more time had lapsed doing something that wasn't right for her.
As Krasnow and Lucas found, it's okay to change your mind, and the ability to identify what's working for you and what's not -- before investing time and energy into an enterprise that will lead to unhappiness or lost time -- can be a skill that can lead to success. Steven Levitt, co-author of the book Freakonomics, argues that learning to "fail quickly" was a key to his success as an economist: "ever since the beginning, my mantra has been "fail quickly." If I started with a hundred ideas, I'm lucky if two or three of those ideas will ever turn into academic papers. One of my great skills as an economist has been to recognize the need to fail quickly and the willingness to jettison a project as soon as I realize it's likely to fail." What if former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman had continued on the med student track instead of graduating with a degree in Economics and running eBay and now HP?
And being willing to cut your losses and change course doesn't just affect you in the present: Studies show your ability to move on from past events may impact your judgment when it comes to future investments of time and self. A study by Marijke van Putten, Marcel Zeelenberg and Eric van Dijk found that people who have a tendency to ruminate about past events and have a hard time letting go of them (a mindset the researchers refer to as "state orientation") were especially prone to fall in the sunk cost trap later on, while people who were more easily able to let go of past events (those with "action orientation"), were not as susceptible to the sunk cost effect. Don't let a bad relationship or a bad business decision come back to haunt you; look to what makes sense for the future, rather than turning back towards the past.
But abandoning unattainable goals has benefits beyond saving money and time or sparing yourself further heartache. Carstan Wrosch, a psychology professor at Concordia in Montreal, found that quitting can be good for your health.
Wrosch conducted a study of 90 adolescents and told Freakonomics listeners:
People who are better able to let go when they experience unattainable goals, they have ... less depressive symptoms, less negative affect over time. They also have lower Cortisol levels, and they have lower levels of systemic inflammation which is a marker of immune functioning. And they develop fewer physical health problems over time.
The key to success, it seems, lies not in never quitting, but in knowing when to quit. That can be a tall order for people who like a concrete set of rules to follow, including "Never quit" and women who still grow up -- and live -- under a lot of pressure to play by the rules. The data on quitting may just be further evidence of that so hard to swallow truth, that the only hard and fast rule of adulthood is to make your own rules, and even then be open to changing them.
Follow Jessica Pearce Rotondi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lanewyorkaise
Quitters always fail. They build or create nothing, or very little. I can't imagine glorifying such a socially unacceptable message. A "quitting attitude" is one of the reasons our Country is currently in such a mess.
The message for each of us, and our troubled Country is never quit, never stop trying to succeed.
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow--
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor's cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out--
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.
-Anonymous Author
I believe the reason why I don't like to give up or it takes me forever to do so, is because I have alot of people expecting me to stay and if I quit people will think less of me. I tend to put how others feel about me ahead of what I feel is right for myself. I think this is true for most women.
For walking away - knowing nothing else - she should get a badge of courage award... and without any other info about Krasnow, but, since 'courage' is THE most crucial of all elements in your tough decisions, a "wow" and "bravo" to her.
In the sense of "sunk-cost" theory - Krasnow had the courage to look ONLY at prospective-costs (the future)... good for her.
you hang EVERYTHING up ... go to the Tenerife Islands ... put a SIGN on your neck "will work for board and tix" and go on sailboats across the Atlantic for peanuts plus... or
you take 10k and get a license for a private plane (with special endorsements) ... you use it to move to Africa and make VERY little money (but get a small house and food) flying photographers from different news agencies... or
you learn to make small, manual grape and/or olive presses .. move to a beautiful Greek Island and sell them to locals and tourists ... and live off of fish, calamari and med salads...
need more info? let me know :))
I'm not a woman, and I've heard that plenty of times.