Saying Yes to Things That Don't Look Promising

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"Even sometimes saying yes to things that don't look promising lead to extraordinary changes in your life," she says. "I'm trying to work on both, right? Being more careful about saying no to things that I'm predicting are not going to be worth my time and saying yes to stuff that looks kind of wild and crazy, but like wouldn't that be cool?" She adds: "You're just going to have a human experience that's precious."

Annie Duke is angry that quitting gets such a bad rap. Instead of our relentless focus on grit and "going for it," the former professional poker player, decision strategist, and author of Quit wants us to recognize the costs associated with sticking to a losing outcome. Listen as she explains to EconTalk host Russ Roberts how society's conflation of grit with character has made quitting unnecessarily hard, and why our desire for certainty harms our decision-making ability. Additional topics include the flawed mental accounting that makes us confuse wins for losses, what we can learn from ants, and the tragic story of how the refusal to quit cost 16 lives one terrible night at the top of Mt. Everest.