"Quitting Is A Virtue": Why This Decision-Making Expert Says That Quitting Can Be A Growth Strategy Quitting is often perceived as failing, but Annie Duke says it can be the most useful tool you have.

When successful entrepreneurs tell their stories, they often speak of perseverance: Things were hard, but they did not give up. It's an inspiring message, but it can also be misleading. "In order to succeed, you are going to have to stick to hard things," says Annie Duke, a former professional poker player who teaches decision strategies in the executive education program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "But also, in order to succeed, you're going to have to quit the things that aren't worth pursuing."

Quitting has a bad reputation, and Duke is out to clear its name. It's why she wrote her new book, Quit. "We should think of quitting as a virtue, a characteristic that we want to develop," she says. That's especially true for entrepreneurs, who may equate quitting with failure — and therefore may ignore the warning signs that their business is in trouble, in turn wasting their investors' money, their employees' efforts, and their own time in finding more promising ways forward. Here, Duke explains how and when it's best to quit…or at least, to leave the option on the table.

What do you think entrepreneurs misunderstand the most about quitting?

Entrepreneurs are go-getters, and they're brilliant. They bring great value to the world. But if you're stuck in something that isn't worth pursuing, you're not allowing yourself the other opportunities that you might also pursue. That's a concept that we call "opportunity cost."

"Grit" gets you to stick to hard things, but it also gets you to stick to hard things that are not worthwhile — and that stops you from being able to switch to what is worthwhile.

Also, entrepreneurs will say, "But I owe it to my investors to keep going." That's not true. The minute that you determine that the next dollar of your investors' money is not worth putting into your idea, you ought to return the capital and move on. I work with a lot of VCs, and they agree. They have a very positive view of people who do that, because they know it's hard.

Another thing entrepreneurs say is, "I owe it to my employees to keep going." Again, you're doing them a disservice, because now they're toiling away for something that is not worthwhile. You're trapping them in your own decision to persevere.

Related: The Best Way to Win Is to Know When to Quit

Also, if people quit, they won't know if their idea could have succeeded. That burns.

Okay, but if you stick to the thing, you also kind of don't know how it'll turn out, but you have an idea that it's going to be bad. So you would prefer a known bad thing because you're so afraid of going from failing to having failed?

Here's a trick: When you started the venture, you also didn't know how it would turn out. You were in the exact same state as you are right now, when you're thinking about quitting, except you actually know more that the path you're on is probably not the best path to choose.

You write, "Quitting on time will usually feel like quitting too early." Why's that?

Whenever we make a decision, we're making it under conditions of uncertainty. The decision to quit is also made under uncertainty — you're thinking, Should I stick to the path I'm on? If you stick to it, you'll find out! Generally, when we're willing to walk away, we have certainty — but we no longer have a choice. Your employees have all quit and you have no more money, and then you're not questioning whether quitting is the right choice because it's become the only choice.

What we really want to do is quit at the time when we still have a choice — when we still have money in the bank, when we can still help our employees get into a better situation, when we still are able to move to something else that might be more worthwhile. That means it's a forecasting problem. At the point that you quit, there's still going to be a possibility that you could make it work. The problem is that it's not enough of a possibility to make it worthwhile.

Let's talk about how people can forecast, then. What's a good way for someone to know whether it's time to quit?

One of the best ways is to develop what I call a set of kill criteria. Imagine that you start something, and then a year from now you realize you need to shut the business down. But looking back, there were early signals that you were going to have to make that choice. What were they? Now you can think about different metrics that will align with the company being on track — maybe when you'll release "V1" of the product, or what net new customer acquisition will be. Then, whether you hit them or not will tell you if you should stick it out or quit.

One person who uses this really well is Ron Conway, founder and managing partner of SV Angel. When he sees a founder who's not going to succeed, he'll have a discussion with them. They invariably say, "I can turn it around." He doesn't disagree with them. He says, "I believe you. But what does that look like? Let's see what it means in the next, say, two months. What are we going to see?" He figures out what those benchmarks are and then he says, "Let's talk in two months, and if you've hit the benchmarks, I'm all in, but if you've missed them, then we have to talk about shutting it down." And then he'll say, "You know why? Because life is too short. Your life is too short as a brilliant person to toil away at something that isn't working when you could go do something that is going to change the world and change your life and I want to free you up for that."

I like how this drains emotion out of quitting. It's not about success or failure; it's just about strategic decision-making. Still, it's hard to get there.

There are these issues of what we call internal and external validity: We want people to see us as good decision-makers and we want to feel that way about ourselves. And for entrepreneurs in particular, your identity gets wrapped in the startup.

So if you quit? We feel like it means we made a mistake to start in the first place. We ask, What will it mean for who I am? Will it mean that I'm a failure? It's like that moment you quit is when you go from failing to having failed. That causes us to stick in there and slow our progress down.

Related: These Decision-Making Tactics Can Help You Formalize Your Process and Make Better Choices

I suppose this is why you describe quitting as a decision-making tool. After all, tools help us build things.

The example that I use is: Imagine if the first date you went on was the last date you went on, in the sense that you had no option to change your mind. You had to marry them. How hard would it be for you to decide to go on a date? How much research would you have to do? How long would it take you to pull that trigger? Oh my gosh, that would be so impossible. So why is it that you can just go on dates? Because you're going to find out information about the person. Sometimes you stick to it. Sometimes — mostly — you walk away.

Well, every decision that you ever make is like dating. You're dating ideas. You're dating projects. The reason why we can do these things, despite being so uncertain about them, is because we can walk away later.