退一步海阔天高

2022 年 12 月 22 日

https://timharford.com/2022/12/quitting-is-undererated/

         “我是一名斗士，而不是一个逃兵，”莉兹·特拉斯在辞职的前一天说道。她重复了二十多年前彼得·曼德尔森议员的话，尽管曼德尔森在赢得一场政治斗争之后，而不是在输掉一场政治斗争时，更明智地发表讲话。 

不过，这是一件奇怪的事情。成为“斗士”并不完全是一种恭维。在某些情况下，这是一种宝贵的品质，但我不会在我的简历或 Tinder 个人简介中使用这个词。  

不过，对“放弃者/逃兵”这个词，我们毫无疑问。这是一种毫不含糊的侮辱。这很奇怪，因为世界上不仅有太多的争斗，而且没有足够的人愿意放弃。我们太固执了，即使很明显我们犯了错误，我们仍然坚持一个想法、一份工作、或一个浪漫的伴侣。 

没有什么比大流行期间的“悄悄地辞职”更好的例子了，在这种情况下，疲惫不堪的年轻工人拒绝超出合同规定的工作时、或承担超出工作职责的责任。这是一个比“偷懒”更有诗意的术语，而我们 X世代（Gen-Xers ；指60后、70后、以及早期的80后）在25 年前也会将这种行为称为“偷懒”。这也是对过度工作和工资过低的一种完全可以理解的反应（反抗？）。但如果你工作过度且工资过低，在大多数情况下，更好的应对措施不是悄悄地辞职，而是干脆辞职。 

我的意思并不是对 Z 世代（Gen-Z；90后、2000s出生的）的嘲笑。我记得我二十多岁时的一份工作非常痛苦，我也记得为了让我的简历看起来不那么脆弱，我要坚持几年、承受着巨大的社会压力。当然，拿着一份脆弱的简历是有代价的。但如果你是一名年轻的毕业生，那么在你讨厌的工作中度过两年的时间，同时在你想离开的行业中积累技能、经验和人脉，也是如此。大多数人都警告我离职的代价。只有最明智的人警告我不离职的代价。  

你放弃的一切都会为尝试新事物腾出空间。你对一切说“不”的事情都是对其他事情说“是”的机会。 

在她的新书《辞职》中，安妮·杜克认为，当我们权衡是否辞职时，我们的认知偏见会倾向于坚持下去。这种“持久性”（不愿意辞职）被高估了。 

对于一名优秀的扑克玩家来说——杜克确实曾经是一名非常优秀的扑克玩家——这是显而易见的。她写道：“最佳退出可能是区分伟大玩家和业余玩家的最重要技能。”她补充说，如果没有放弃一手牌的选择，扑克根本就不是一项技巧游戏。在流行的德州扑克比赛中（in the popular variant of Texas Hold’em），专家玩家会放弃大约 80% 的牌。 “业余爱好者泽在一半以上的时间里都会坚持使用起始牌。”  

当我们应该放弃时，是什么认知偏见促使我们坚持下去？一是沉没成本效应，我们将过去的成本视为继续采取行动的理由。如果你在你最喜欢的高端购物中心，但找不到你喜欢的东西，那么你花多少时间和金钱去购物中心应该是无关紧要的。但事实并非如此。我们给自己施加压力，为我们已经付出的努力辩护，即使这意味着更多的浪费。 

同样的趋势也适用于数十亿美元的大型项目的关系。我们没有减少损失，而是把好钱花在坏钱上。 （沉没成本谬论对于经济学家来说已经是老生常谈了，但诺贝尔奖获得者理查德·塞勒指出，如果它普遍到足以有一个名字，那么它也普遍到足以被视为人性之一。） 

当我们应该停止时，“现状偏见”也会促使我们坚持下去。经济学家威廉·萨缪尔森(William Samuelson) 和理查德·泽克豪瑟 (Richard Zeckhauser)在 1988 年的一项研究中强调，现状偏见是一种倾向于重申早期决策并坚持现有道路的倾向，而不是主动选择做不同的事情。 

杜克对我们制定这些现状选择的方式感到沮丧。 “我还没准备好做出决定，”我们说。杜克正确地指出，不做决定本身就是一个决定。 

几年前，史蒂夫·莱维特 (Steve Levitt)；《 Freakonomics 》作者之一），建立了一个网站，面临困难决定的人们可以在网上记录他们的困境，用抛硬币来帮助他们选择，然后回访、说出他们做了什么、以及他们对此有何感受。这些决定通常很重要，例如离职或结束一段（亲密）关系。莱维特得出的结论是，决定做出重大改变的人（即放弃者）六个月后比那些决定反对改变的人（即奋斗者）幸福得多。结论是：如果你正需要抛硬币来决定是否放弃，那么你早就该放弃了。 

“我是一个放弃者，而不是一个斗士。”这不是什么政治口号。但作为生活的经验法则，我见过更糟糕的情况。

撰写并首次发表于 金融时报 2022 年 11 月 4 日。

的平装本 数据侦探 于 2 月 1 日在美国和加拿大出版。其他地方的标题： 如何让世界变得更美好。 

我在书店开设了一个店面 美国 和 英国。书店和亚马逊的链接可能会产生推荐费。

Quitting is underrated

22nd December, 2022

https://timharford.com/2022/12/quitting-is-underrated/

         “I am a fighter and not a quitter,” said Liz Truss, the day before quitting. She was echoing the words of Peter Mandelson MP over two decades ago, although Mandelson had the good sense to speak after winning a political fight rather than while losing one. 

It’s a curious thing, though. Being a “fighter” is not entirely a compliment. It’s a prized quality in certain circumstances, but it’s not a word I’d use on my résumé or, for that matter, my Tinder bio. 

There can be little doubt about the term “quitter”, though. It is an unambiguous insult. That’s strange, because not only is there too much fighting in the world, there’s not nearly enough quitting. We are far too stubborn, sticking with an idea, a job, or a romantic partner even when it becomes clear we’ve made a mistake. 

There are few better illustrations of this than the viral popularity of “quiet quitting”, in which jaded young workers refuse to work beyond their contracted hours or to take on responsibilities beyond the job description. It’s a more poetic term than “slacking”, which is what we Gen-Xers would have called exactly the same behaviour 25 years ago. It’s also a perfectly understandable response to being overworked and underpaid. But if you are overworked and underpaid, a better response in most cases would not be quiet quitting, but simply quitting. 

I don’t mean this as a sneer at Gen-Z. I remember being utterly miserable at a job in my twenties, and I also remember how much social pressure there was to stick it out for a couple of years for the sake of making my CV seem less flaky. A flaky CV has its costs, of course. But if you’re a young graduate, so does spending two years of your life in a job you hate, while accumulating skills, experience and contacts in an industry you wish to leave. Most people cautioned me about the costs of quitting; only the wisest warned me of the costs of not quitting. 

Everything you quit clears space 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 up whether or not to quit, our cognitive biases are putting their thumb on the scale in favour of persistence. And persistence is overrated. 

To a good poker player — and Duke used to be a very good poker player indeed — this is obvious. “Optimal quitting might be the most important skill separating great players from amateurs,” she writes, adding that without the option to abandon a hand, poker would not be a game of skill at all. Expert players abandon about 80 per cent of their hands in the popular variant of Texas Hold’em. “Compare that to an amateur, who will stick with their starting cards over half the time.” 

What are these cognitive biases that push us towards persisting when we should quit? One is the sunk cost effect, where we treat past costs as a reason to continue with a course of action. If you’re at your favourite high-end shopping mall but you can’t find anything you love, it should be irrelevant how much time and money it cost you to travel to the mall. But it isn’t. We put ourselves under pressure to justify the trouble we’ve already taken, even if that means more waste. 

The same tendency applies from relationships to multi-billion-dollar mega-projects. Instead of cutting our losses, we throw good money after bad. (The sunk cost fallacy is old news to economists, but it took Nobel laureate Richard Thaler to point out that if it was common enough to have a name, it was common enough to be regarded as human nature.) 

The “status quo bias” also tends to push us towards persevering when we should stop. Highlighted in a 1988 study by the economists William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser, the status quo bias is a tendency to reaffirm earlier decisions and cling to the existing path we’re on, rather than make an active choice to do something different. 

Duke is frustrated with 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, the co-author of Freakonomics, set up a website in which people facing difficult decisions could record their dilemma, toss a coin to help them choose and later return to say what they did and how they felt about it. These decisions were often weighty, such as leaving a job or ending a relationship. Levitt concluded that people who decided to make a major change — that is, the quitters — were significantly happier six months later than those who decided against the change — that is, the fighters. The conclusion: if you’re at the point when you’re tossing a coin to help you decide whether to quit, you should have quit some time ago. 

“I am a quitter and not a fighter.” It’s not much of a political slogan. But as a rule of thumb for life, I’ve seen worse.

Written for and first published in the Financial Times on 4 November 2022.

The paperback of The Data Detective was published on 1 February in the US and Canada. Title elsewhere: How To Make The World Add Up. 

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