Thread by @AnnieDuke

So grateful to Daniel Kahneman for blurbing #QUIT. Also shoutout to @WolfeJosh who introduced me to Danny 4 years ago. What an amazing intro! Danny was incredibly generous w/his time during the writing process, hopping on many zooms with me to help me think through the topic.

Kahneman’s work, much of it with Amos Tversky, is so foundational to the ideas in #QUIT. The concept of sure loss aversion (the bias against turning paper losses into realized losses, which stops you from stopping things when you are in the losses) comes from those conversations.

Loss aversion also biases us against quitting. Loss aversion makes us not want to start things where we might experience a bad outcome & regret. Since quitting means starting something new (ie quitting your job to find another) loss aversion stops us from switching to new things.

It doesn’t feel like sticking w/the status quo is starting new every day. Staying in your job each day doesn’t feel like starting each day. But switching to a new one does. *Loss aversion is asymmetric*, recruited when we consider quitting to start something new.

Danny also offered a solution to our bias against quitting: find a quitting coach. His is @R_Thaler. (I’d like to have a Nobel laureate as my quitting coach also!). If Kahneman thinks he needs someone to help him see when it is time to walk away, I think we all do.

Kahneman is a prolific researcher who won the Nobel prize for his work on prospect theory.

There are too many foundational papers to cite but THINKING FAST AND SLOW is a fantastic intro to his outsized influence on the discipline of behavioral economics:
amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-…

Danny also just published NOISE along with @CassSunstein and @SobOliv, a fantastic exploration on how variability in human judgment addles our decision making. I LOVE this book and use the concepts in my everyday work.

amazon.com/Noise-Human-Ju…

You can listen to a super fun podcast of a conversation between me, Kahneman, @WolfeJosh, and @MJMauboussin that Josh hosted at @Lux_Capital. I hope it is obvious how wonderful and warm and kind Danny is when you listen.

podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/ris…

Here is Kahneman’s blurb: “This brilliant and entertaining book documents a major flaw in human actions and decisions: the bias against quitting. I learned a lot from its compelling tales of failures and sound recommendations. You will too.”