I’m sorry to say this, but I was very disappointed with this book. I couldn’t get past 15% of it.
It needs to be edited even more than it is now. The repetition of the same story in first 9% drove me crazy.
The writing style was so dry, that I would rather read a medical dictionary. It was a good remedy for insomnia.

Snd to think how excited I was to read this book…

Thank you to Net Galley and Penguin Group Portfolio for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. I very much enjoyed the author's first book and was intrigued by the topic for this book. Knowing when to quit in life is a difficult one and this book shed light on the topic through studies and great examples. As the author was a poker player and a student, she starts with what she knows...when to know when to fold a hand and when to step away when your passion for your studies dwindle. Some of the other examples were stock investing, when a show jumps the shark, Alex Honnold's decision to quit his bid to free climb El Capitan, start-ups, California's high speed rail and Sears. She reviews the ideas of sunk costs and forced quitting. The ideas discussed apply to every day decisions and the largest decisions on a corporate/government level and possibly will make the next decision to quit or stay just a bit easier.

"Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away" is an exceptional guide for anyone struggling with decision-making in their personal or professional lives. Duke's approach to quitting is both pragmatic and thoughtful, making it easy for readers to follow along and apply her principles to their own situations. The book is well-organized and engaging, filled with anecdotes and examples that help illustrate her points, like quitting is a prerequisite to winning.

Overall, "Quit" is a refreshing and insightful read that will leave readers feeling empowered and better equipped to make the tough choices in life. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to take control of their own destiny.

Annie Duke collaborated with many experts to re-package some existing research into potentially actionable information to help us make better quitting decisions. While there did seem to be some repetition, the examples and ideas were engaging. I found myself discussing this book with several people as I was reading it, so I'm likely to pick up a copy.

QUIT

If you happen to subscribe to the mantra that "Winners never quit and quitters never win," then Annie Duke may want to have a word with you.

Her latest book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away takes to task the notion that what matters to success is perseverance at all costs. After all, while it's true that grit or "stick-to-it-iveness" are frequently hailed as character traits necessary for achievement, stubborn perseverance can also lead people down the road to ruin. Indeed, the core point Duke makes in Quit is a nuanced one: there are times when it's appropriate to soldier on and there are times when the right thing to do is to throw in the towel. Success, in turn, is really a matter of discerning one from the other.

Much of Quit is dedicated to expounding upon the myriad reasons we tend to persevere at our own peril. Whether because of flaws of reasoning (such as the sunk cost fallacy) or emotional responses (like ego or attachment) Duke offers many real-life examples of what can only be described as "grit gone wrong." Yet as compelling an argument as she is able to offer, Duke's thesis in Quit appears to contradict arguably one of the stronger points from her earlier book, Thinking in Bets.

In the latter, Duke made the case that an outcome does not by itself speak to the soundness of a decision; that is to say, that it would be (could be?) foolish to judge a decision as good or bad purely based on the result. The analogy in this regard is the game of poker, where even professionals like Duke can play the hand they're dealt correctly and still end up losing. Yet she appears to be singing a different tune in Quit. The communications platform Slack, to cite one example from the book, came to be because founder Stuart Butterfield had the foresight to pull the plug on the massively multiplayer online role-playing game his company was running at the time—a perfect case of literally "quitting while you're ahead."

Stories like these abound in the book, which comes across like so much survivorship bias. Yes, Quit examples aplenty of where quitting paid off for some successful person or other. But surely there are as many if not more counterfactuals where quitting did not yield favorable results. That is, assuming it is at all possible to suss out such results.

But perhaps this needlessly complicates Duke's otherwise simple point: that quitting is, well, always an option. In that context, Quit provides useful insights to help people take that option when warranted.

An interesting exploration of the benefits of quitting (while you're ahead or so you prevent additional losses of time and other resources). Each chapter ends with helpful tips and a summary of what was covered in the chapter. Full of anecdotes and examples of why to quit, parameters to set to help you recognize when to quit, etc.

In American culture, quitting has become synonymous with failure. People who persevere are those who are admired. But Duke argues that we need to start learning when it is time to quit. Sometimes, it just isn't worth the fight.
She lays out example after example showing that leaving the option of quitting on the table means you've given yourself more choices. Of course, that means you have to be open to the fact that you will never know what might have been. Being open to change, even when your are happy, might make your life even better.
I really liked the last chapter and talking about setting goals. So many books talk about goal setting as a panacea but they don't talk about the drawbacks. One instance of a downside would be trying to meet your goals to the exclusion of all else. The suggestion of not making goals pass/fail and allowing for outs in certain situations seems much more reasonable and, frankly, less depressing.
This book is incredibly readable and the author even inserts some of her own stories into the book. I wish there had been more scientific data to support her hypothesis but there are a lot of engaging stories to prove her point.

Four stars
This book comes out October 4, 2022
ARC kindly provided by Penguin Group Portfolio and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

I really liked the book. I have been teaching university seminars on the topic and have been using Duke’s books (along with other books by the giants of the fields such as Kahneman, Taleb, etc.)

I liked this book because (1) Her writing is engaging; (2) She has identified a single issue which is less emphasized in the literature and provides interesting stories and arguments to educate the reader about it. (3) I think the book can potentially benefit the reader.

To elaborate on the last point: when I choose a book to include in the reading list for my students, I try to estimate how useful it will be for them (not an easy task). I think this book rates very well because the subject is less covered in other books. Also, the considerable number of cases covered in the book helps readers to internalize the concepts. It is important to note that Duke is trying to advocate for an idea that faces massive negative forces (cognitive biases, social stigma, etc.). Therefore, I think the length, the number of stories, and a bit of repetition are all justified in this case. Yes, she could have summarized the whole book in a few pages, but it wouldn’t have had the same effect on the reader, and it certainly would have been much less entertaining to read.

The stories are mostly chosen to support the benefits of quitting, so there is some selection bias there. But she makes it clear that she is not advocating against grit. It’s just that there are many good books on the benefits of grit and much fewer books have discussed the importance of quitting when warranted. That is why I think this is a useful book to read in addition to all the other good books one reads on decision making.

I received a free ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed Annie Duke's book "Thinking in Bets" and so I was delighted when I saw this title pop up on NetGalley. In "Thinking in Bets," Duke unpacks how lessons she learned as a professional poker player can have broader applications to decision making and risk assessment. Here, she focuses on "knowing when to fold 'em," arguing that in many situations, people wait too long to exit an unfavourable situation due to some combination of shame—our culture tends to value grit and determination while denigrating "quitters"—and cognitive biases such as the endowment effect or the sunk cost fallacy. Duke provides plenty of anecdotes to support her thesis, such as Muhammad Ali staying in the ring well past the point at which it was medically advisable and contrary examples, like Slack founder Stewart Butterfield's decision to pivot away from an untenable situation even though it appeared, on the surface, to be a costly choice.

Duke's argument is built on examples like these that make for good reading but not necessarily strong evidence. For example, she talks a lot about how we value grit, but she doesn't consider the extent to which "stubbornness" is a negative value. This is symptomatic of her overall selectiveness of evidence; she doesn't offer up any examples of situations where people dropped out of a situation too early though I am sure there are plenty of people who should have stuck around with an investment or idea a bit longer. That might have been okay if Duke were making a more innovative argument, but she runs through the same old BE studies, cognitive biases, and irrational behaviours that are by now very familiar to anyone who reads much in this space. The same studies show up and though the framing is different, there's not a lot that's new here.

At the end of the day, this is the type of book that will show up in the business section of an airport book store. It's mildly interesting and Duke's an engaging enough writer to help pass the time on a plane, but it's not an especially innovative or rigorous study.

I took up this book due to its interesting title “Quit”. And it seemed to be appropriately timed, what with all the buzz about “Great Resignation” and so on. It also came into my shelf at a time when people around me in my workplace were quitting.

Many of the things Annie puts out in this book makes sense - the clear use of the sunk cost traps, escalation to commitment - are perfect in this context. So many of us keep wondering about the time and effort we have invested into building our skills for a job and then are too worried about quitting it for the reason that we already invested so much. Annie brings in the aspected of expected valuie and the fact that quitting early is never too late for making a better change.

She goes on to also indicate how with the goal setting we might have more difficulties in quitting, because the finish line drives us to complete that task. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to go further - her examples of marathon runners running with broken bones is very hard hitting. We need to quit when there are enough signals - but it takes a lot of mental energy to do that.

I liked the book overall, but I think the core ideas of the book are a few and there is a lot of repetition because of that. Probably a crisper text would have made it more appealing, in my view

now this was a good one, but honestly not a favorite of mine but with the right people, this can go very far

Knowing when to quit a venture is powerful. One one side the book tells the stories we already know and show examples of how and at which mountains celebrities decided to quit, on the other side it helps you to understand that quitting is not necessarily something bad and knowing the right time for you to stop doing something can be even beneficial.

Nothing new here. A rehash of research that has been rehashed many times before. Renaming and reorganizing the same info that’s already been renamed and retold before.

An apologia that doesn't bring anything new to the table. I was disappointed by how much "fluff" there was in this book. Not a helpful book during this time.

With "Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away," bestselling author Annie Duke explores an under-appreciated business skill - the art and science of knowing when to walk away.

I had the privilege of of reading "Quit" right about the time I was in the early stages of exploring professional changes and slowly tiptoeing toward an exploration of my options and alternatives.

"Quit" essentially teaches how to become good at quitting. Duke draws on stories from the likes of elite athletes, corporate CEOS, well known entertainers, and a host of others in explaining why quitting is integral to success, as well as strategies for determining when to hold, when to fold, and how gaining this skill saves us time, energy, and money.

While Duke's storytelling is effective, much of "Quit" reads like a book searching for a problem to solve rather than the leadership guide it hopes to be. Acknowledging that "knowing when to walk away" is an issue we all experience, "Quit" spends a good amount of its time simply making the argument that "knowing when to walk away" is important rather than guiding us toward the skills necessary to improve in this area. At times, Duke makes what seems to be assumptions about a person's motivations, especially when the failure to quit had particularly negative results. For example, in sharing the story of one famous mountain climber setting out to conquer 100 of New England's highest peaks, Duke makes assumptions about this individual's motivations in failing to see the risks of what would be his final of the 100 peaks.

Is she accurate in this assumption? Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

In fact, perhaps this person DID actually considering quitting but based upon his own expertise opted to continue believing he could conquer this final challenge.

Perhaps he was simply wrong. In hindsight, many of us can look back at situations where we could have decided differently whether that's quitting or continuing, doing things differently or simply going into pause. To assume that this individual was behaving in a way that just so happened to fit within the structure of her book is uncomfortable at best. Is there additional evidence to support the assumption? If so, it's simply not well presented here.

This type of approach hinders the effectiveness of "Quit," a book with valid and important subject matter that's simply not as effective as it could be due to a lack of cohesive organization and a structure that often comes off as personal opinion rather than evidence-based assertions.

That said, and this is super important, "Quit" is well sourced with approximately 20% of its pages devoted to Duke's abundance of source material.

I also lamented that Duke seldom dips her literary toes into a myriad of other ways in which the issue of quitting becomes relevant ranging from relationships to social justice to the non-profit world. While one could argue this is primarily a business book, Duke deviates enough from that primary goal that the other areas where it could have been relevant become even more obvious.

There's little denying that "Quit" will have its devotees and for those who immediately click with Duke's vision for the book it may very well be worth a read. I didn't dislike "Quit." In fact, I'd dare say it helped me, at least to a certain degree, in my own exploration professionally of "Is it time to quit this current position?"

Or do I hold?

Unfortunately, I also can't help but feel like "Quit" falls short in terms of applicability of its material and in the true depth to which Duke could have taken this important subject matter. In the end "Quit" becomes an informative primer on the valuable subject of knowing when to walk away.

In the end, I was simply hoping for a whole lot more.