Opinion: Giving up a job is underrated

“I’m a fighter and I don’t give up,” said Liz Truss, a day before giving up and resigning as the UK’s prime minister. She was quoting the words of MP Peter Mandelson more than two decades ago, although Mandelson had the good sense to make that statement after winning a political struggle, not in the midst of defeat.

It’s curious, though. Being a “fighter” is not entirely a compliment. In certain circumstances, this quality is appreciated, but it’s not a word I would use on my resume or, for that matter, on my Tinder profile.

About the term “give up” there is not much doubt. It is an unmistakable insult. This is strange, because not only is there too much fighting in the world, people don’t give up nearly as much as they should. We are too stubborn, and we cling to an idea, a job, or a romantic partner even when it becomes clear that we have made a mistake.

There are few better illustrations of this than the viral popularity of “quiet quitting,” a practice that drives exhausted young workers to refuse to work outside of their contract hours, or to take on responsibilities that go beyond their duties.

It’s a more poetic term than being “flabby,” which is how we Gen Xers would have described the exact same behavior 25 years ago. It is also a perfectly understandable response to being overworked and underpaid. But if you are overworked and earning poorly, the best answer, in most cases, would not be “quiet quitting”; it would simply be to resign.

I don’t say this to criticize Gen Z. I remember feeling terrible at my job when I was in my twenties, and I also remember the social pressure there was for me to create an orderly resume. A cluttered resume has its costs, of course. But if you’re a fresh out of college, spending two years of your life in a job you hate while accumulating skills, experience and contacts in an industry you don’t plan to continue in also takes its toll. Most people warned me about the costs of quitting; only the wisest warned me about the costs of not leaving a job.

What you give up makes room for you to try something new. Everything you say “no” to is an opportunity to say “yes” to something else.

In her new book, “Quit,” Annie Duke argues that when we’re weighing whether or not to quit, our cognitive biases tend to tip the balance in favor of persistence. And persistence is overrated.

For a good poker player — and Duke used to be a spectacular player — this is obvious. “Knowing exactly when to fold may be the single most important quality that separates great players from amateurs,” she writes, adding that without the option to fold a hand, poker would not be a game of skill at all. Experienced players fold about 80% of the hands they play in the popular Texas Hold’em variant of poker. “Compare that to amateurs, who more than half the time choose to keep the cards they’ve been dealt.”

What are these cognitive biases that push us to persist when we should give up?

One is the sunk cost effect, under which we treat past costs as a reason to stay a certain course. If you’re at your favorite upscale mall but can’t find anything you want to buy, the time and money spent on the way to the mall shouldn’t weigh heavily in your calculations. But that’s not what happens. We put ourselves under pressure to justify the effort we’ve already made going there, even if it means even more waste. The same trend applies to everything from relationships to multibillion-dollar projects. Instead of cutting the damage, we prefer to continue to spend to try to recover what we have lost.

(The sunk cost fallacy is nothing new to economists, but it took Robert Thaler, a Nobel laureate in economics, to point out that if it was common enough to have a name, then surely the enough to be considered part of human nature.)

The “status quo bias” also tends to push us to persevere when we should give up. Highlighted in a 1988 study conducted by economists William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser, the “status quo bias” is the tendency to restate previous decisions and stick to the existing path, rather than actively choosing to try something different.

Duke chafes at the way we frame these status quo choices. “I’m not ready to make a decision,” we say. Duke rightly points out that not making a decision is itself a decision.

A few years ago, Steve Levitt, one of the authors of “Freakonomics: The Hidden and Unexpected Side of Everything That Affects Us,” created a website where people who had to make difficult decisions could register their dilemma, toss a coin to help them. them to choose and later come back to say what they had done and how they felt about it. These were often heavy decisions, like quitting a job or ending a relationship. Levitt concluded that people who decided to make a big change — that is, those who quit — were significantly happier six months later than those who decided not to change — that is, the fighters. The bottom line: If you’ve gotten to the point where you turn to a coin toss to help you decide whether or not to give something up, you should have given up a while ago.

“Better to give up than to fight”. It’s not a great political slogan. But as a guide to life, I’ve seen worse.

Translation by Paulo Migliacci