When to Quit and not Win
"Quitters never win, winners never quit. But those who never win and never quit are idiots." — David Brent, "The Office" *
The main message in "Grit" by Angela Duckworth is that talent cannot guarantee success, but rather identifying your passion, perseverance and following through on our commitments. At a first glance, this implies that one should never be a quitter, but what if quitting is optimal in a given situation?
In his recent book "How to Be a Stoic", Massimo Pigliucci discusses the principles of stoicism and how their practice could help to live a better life. The narrative is inspired by the ancient stoic Epictetus, who was born as a slave and carried on to become an influential philiosopher. One of the central takeaways from the book, and the stoic philosophy, is to identify what can be controlled and what cannot be controlled and, based on that, decide how to spend your own time and energy. An obvious, and surprisingly overlooked example is that one should not worry about things that have occurred in the past, as we cannot control them; we should focus on what we can control now and what we may control in the future. However, not all examples allow us to simply determine what can or cannot be controlled.
There is, though, one case where deciding what is controllable is easy: the dilemma of quitting vs. winning. This dilemma comes in any project, ranging from preparing a meal according to a fancy recipe and up to career choices, especially academic ones. The obvious thing is: we are in control of the decision to quit, but we are not in control on the outcome of winning. Indeed, we are in control of preparing in the best possible way to win, but precisely the winning outcome is out of our control, as it can be affected by various unpredictable factors. But when to quit and when to persist towards winning?
Let us take the case of persistence first. Some time ago I was asked to make a presentation about getting research grants for some of the junior faculty/researchers. One of the slides was listing all the proposals that were rejected, in red color, and all those that were accepted, in green color. The slide was bloody red with some green spots. Most of the research grants represent a good example of a goal that need persistence. Despite the noisy review process, it follows well-established criteria of project idea, relevance, scientific achievements of the candidate, and similar. If you do not get it this time, then work more on your ideas, publish, try again, refine, etc. Of course, sometimes getting the grant itself is to gain opportunity to think of ideas, do research, write articles, as not getting the grant would mean an avalanche of teaching and administrative tasks. However, it is an endeavor worth pursuing as the very process of improving your research track record involves — research itself, such that this process should be enjoyable to an academic; otherwise, it is not the right choice of passion (recall the "Grit" book from above).
Now the quitting. Also some time ago, I was lured into applying for a honorary position in an academic institution. Similarly to a research grant, the applicants should send their scientific achievements, which, we all agree, are hard quantitative factors that are very indicative, although not revealing the whole truth. Differently from the research grant, there was a macabre process of voting, highly dependent on the health status of the voters, and selection process that largely disregards the scientific achievements. I have not passed this second process and there was an attempt to lure me into trying again, since "quitters do not win". Well, this is actually a perfect example of the case where one should quit, as the things we are in control (e.g. becoming better next time) are not going to change the outcome. The outcome may be changed either by things we cannot control or by things we can control, but are against our principles and ethics.
So, when to be a quitter and give up on winning? There are at least three generic cases:
- Sisyphus case: When the things that can change the outcome are not in your control. Sisyphus was a king in a Greek Mythology who was punished by the Gods to do an impossible task: roll a stone to a top of a hill, while the stone was rolled down to the bottom just before reaching the top.
- Groucho Marx case: When the things that can change the outcome are in your control, but require to change your ethical principles or affect your integrity. The comedian Groucho Marx said: "Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others."
- Betamax case: When the time and energy invested in the things we can control largely surpass the benefit from winning. Betamax was a videotape standard that, besides having a higher quality than VHS, has never attained the success and popularity of VHS.
*Thanks to Kimmo Kansanen for bringing this quote to attention.
