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Winners Never Quit? Well, Yes, They Do
By ALINA TUGEND
I’VE been thinking about quitting lately. No, not my job, nor my marriage nor the incredibly long Russian novel I need to read by September for my book group (check back with me on that later).
Rather, I’ve been thinking about the concept in general. Watching the superhuman feats of the Olympic athletes this week, I’ve admired the dedication and single-minded focus they exhibit. I think about how maybe if I had just worked harder -- much harder -- at gymnastics when I was young, I could have reached that lofty goal (conveniently forgetting how ill-suited I was to the sport because of my great fear of falling on my head).
Olympians embody one of the great clichés about quitting: “Quitters never win and winners never quit.” My athletic career, on the other hand, is summed up by the other platitude about quitting: “You’ve gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.”
Throughout life, we pretty much get those two contradictory messages about quitting. In general, quitting is perceived as bad. A quitter is a loser or, even worse, a traitor -- someone who doesn’t hang in when the going gets tough, someone who lets her team down. Quit once, and it becomes a habit.
“Americans have been brainwashed by Vince Lombardi,” said Seth Godin, author of the book “The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick).” (Portfolio, 2007). Lombardi coined the “quitters never win” quote.
Winners do quit all the time, Mr. Godin says. “They just quit the right stuff at the right time.”
The trick, of course, is to know when it’s right to walk away and when it’s not. Gregory Miller, an associate professor of psychology at the
Professor Miller and his colleagues have followed college students, older people and the parents of children with cancer and found that, in many cases, moving from a difficult goal to another, more attainable, one can create a greater sense of well-being, both mentally and physically.
In the September issue of the journal Psychological Science, Professor Miller, along with Carsten Wrosch, associate professor of psychology at
The goals, chosen by the participants in the subject, tended to revolve around academic success or body image, Professor Miller said.
The difficulty lies in knowing when to abandon one goal and move on to something else.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Professor Miller said. “How do you draw the line between what’s attainable and what’s not?”
Professor Miller is not advocating forsaking your dreams, just shifting to those that may be more manageable. In particular, studies of older people found that they were happier if they found new goals to pursue once giving up on the old ones, in contrast with those who abandoned their previous aims without substituting anything new.
We have to realize, he said, that “this relentless pursuit of goals has a cost to it.”
Kathleen D. Vohs, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, has also studied the issue, largely in relation to people who regularly overspend and to chronic dieters. She said that people need internal resources to attain their goals, and “if you are a pursuing a goal that is constantly frustrating, you will be less successful in goal attainment in other areas of life.
“One of the most frustrating goals for people is weight loss or weight loss maintenance,” Professor Vohs said. So if a person concentrates on that goal, she may have fewer internal resources to deal with other challenging situations in life, like a demanding boss or an angry spouse.
The answer, Professor Vohs said, is perhaps “stepping back temporarily and saying, ‘I’m going to try to live a healthy life and not try so hard to lose weight.’ ”
Sometimes the desire not to quit surpasses all reason. Ori and Rom Brafman are brothers and the authors of the book “Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior” (Doubleday Business, 2008).
“There is a huge amount of social and psychological forces keeping people from quitting,” Ori Brafman said. He gave an example of an experiment by a Harvard professor who auctioned off a $20 bill. The catch was that while the winner got the $20, the bidder who came in second had to pay the amount of his bid, but got nothing in return.
The experiment was done repeatedly with a variety of participants, and most bidders dropped out at about $12, usually leaving two to fight it out, Mr. Brafman said.
“They didn’t want to be a sucker, paying $12 for nothing,” he said. The record? A bid of $204 for a $20 bill.
“Rather than thinking about winning, they’re playing not to lose,” he said.
This tendency to feel so invested in a situation -- or too embarrassed to admit that we might have chosen the wrong path -- permeates all aspects of our lives.
Perhaps even more difficult than letting ourselves abandon an idea or a project is giving our children permission to do so. As a parent, I know that it can be agonizing to decide when to allow your child to quit something, whether it be a musical instrument, a sports team or a summer camp.
The urge is often to tell him to stick with it because he’ll appreciate it when he’s older, or he made a commitment (and we spent the money), or because we fear that letting him give up this time means he will give up on anything when it gets a little tough.
And in this age of instant gratification, we don’t want to teach our children that just because something is difficult means it’s not worth pursuing. We want them know the joy of mastery, of accomplishing an arduous task.
But allowing your child to quit can be the right move if you understand the reasons behind it. Is it a social problem? A problem with the teacher or coach? A bad fit in general?
If the decision to quit seems to be the right one (and the problem is, there is never a guarantee), we need to learn the right way to do it, said Rom Brafman, who is also a psychologist.
“It is as important to teach someone how to quit as staying committed,” he said. “Lots of times people just stop showing up, and that’s wrong.” Rather, he suggested, say something like “ ‘I tried to work it out, and this not a good match for me.’ Do it in a responsible manner.”
The truth is, it sometimes shows more courage to leave than to stay.
“You’re going against the grain, and it’s hard to be the lone dissenter,” Rom Brafman said.
Mr. Godin advises that the worst time to quit is when you’re feeling the most pain. For example, he said, few drop out of a marathon in the beginning or near the finish line. The worst time is the middle. So plan for it, he says. Know that there will probably be the “dip,” and have your family there give you a boost.
This abhorrence of quitting is not necessarily true in all cultures. Professor Vohs says she sees it among Americans and Japanese, but less so in
“For Europeans, it’s more understandable to have to quit a goal because it’s healthier, because it’s wreaking havoc on other parts of your life,” she said.
Taking a fresh -- and more positive look -- at quitting is not necessarily a new idea. W. C. Fields coined this twist on an old cliché: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”
Thank you, Ed Smith!
