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Whether is comes to following through with diet plans or work plans or study plans… precommitment contracts get people to act more rationally.

…when you set out clear kill criteria in advance and make a precommitment to walk away when you see those signals, you are just more likely to follow through, even when you are losing.

When we commit to a course of action, it means that, in some sense, we now own that decision.

We are all trying to defend ourselves against how we imagine other people are going to judge us. We get it in our heads that if we don’t stick to our original choice, that will reflect negatively on us.

If extreme positions become more integral to who we are, we ought to see less escalation of commitment from those with consensus positions.

There is no longer honor in spending every last bit of investor money pursuing an endeavor that’s failing. Returning capital to investors is the responsible choice under those circumstances and demonstrates the ability to make the hard decision when it’s the right thing to do.

Most of us aren’t lucky enough to have somebody… But we should all try to find someone who tells us the truth, whether it’s a close friend, a mentor, a coworker, a sibling, or a parent.

…like everything else that potentially improves quitting behavior, just because your portfolio is diversified doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to make great choices about what to quit and what to keep pursuing.

Altogether, the pass-fail nature of goals can impede progress, cause escalation of commitment, and stop us from considering the progress we make along the way as success.

To achieve the things we want to achieve, we have to be responsive to the way the world is changing around us and the way that we ourselves are changing.