Do you know when it's time to quit?

For my Friday social media post, I talked about attending a professional event where Annie Duke was sharing many of the insights from her most recent book, Quit:  The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (here's the link to the post if you want to read it) It was interesting to read the comments and talk to yesterday's participants who were in the midst of deciding or who had made decisions to make a change. 

One thing I found interesting was the reaction to the word "quit."  Many of us grew up believing that quitting was a bad thing; that it meant we were not trying hard enough or that we didn't have the grit to stick it out.  What the book and the discussion highlighted was that quitting is not about failure; it's about making the strategic decision on how you want to use your time, energy, and other resources in the future.  We always have a finite set of resources to use so we need to place bets on what will bring us the best outcome, recognizing that luck will always play a role in the final outcome.

I loved her focus on monkeys and pedestals because it reminded me a little bit about the concept of eating the frog (Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time). Two very different topic areas but the similarity I saw was that we have to figure out the hard thing first - can it be done - before we move on to the easy things.  We may want to knock off the low hanging fruit, but often that's just our way of avoiding doing the hard thing.

For this week's quote reflections, I've chosen two from Annie Duke that hopefully give you an opportunity to consider what's going on in your life related to decisions you need to make - stay or leave a job, sign up for a new challenge, buy or sell a house and move to a new location, or what ever else is coming up. 

Do you have the right information to make a good decision and what role will luck play in achieving the outcome  you want?

When you have done the work and have the information, then it's time to take that leap of faith.