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There is no doubt that quitting is an important decision-making skill. Getting the decision right is sometimes a matter of life and death.

Quitting is the tool that allows you to make that different decision when you learn [about] new information. It gives you the ability to react to the way the world has changed, your state of knowledge has changed, or how you have changed.

…it’s so important to skill up on quitting, because having the option to quit is what will keep you from being paralyzed by uncertainty or being stuck forever in every decision you make.

While it is true that quitting is one of your most important tools for making good decisions under uncertainty, it is also true that uncertainty is an impediment to making good decisions about quitting.

…the only time you can be sure you should quit is when it’s no longer a decision, when you’re at the edge of the abyss or you’ve already stumbled into it. Then you have no choice but to abandon course.

…quitting effectively, when the context warrants it, ought to be the definition of a happy ending. It is just hard for us to see it that way because we process quitting as failure.

We’re not omniscient. We don’t have crystal balls or time machines. All we have is our best assessment of an uncertain and changing landscape and the hope that we have honed our quitting skills enough to walk away when conditions turn against us.

Quitting on time will usually feel like quitting too early.

At the moment that quitting becomes the objectively best choice, in practice things generally won’t look particularly grim, even though the present does contain clues that can help you figure out how the future might unfold.

…perhaps because of our aversion to quitting, we tend to rationalize away the clues contained in the present that would allow us to see how bad things really are.