Contrary to popular belief, winners quit a lot. That’s how they win.

Chapter 11 Summary Goals can make it possible to achieve worthwhile things, but goals can also increase the chances that we will escalate commitment when we should quit. Goals are pass-fail in nature. You either reach the finish line or you don’t, and progress along the way matters very little. Don’t just measure whether you hit the goal, ask what

Lots of hard things are worth pursuing and grit is good for getting you to stick with it when it’s right. But lots of hard things are not worth pursuing and the ability to walk away when it’s right is also a skill worth developing.

If you quit something that’s no longer worth pursuing, that’s not a failure. That’s a success.

What makes it so hard to quit, if we were to sum up everything that we’ve talked about in this book, is that when we quit, we fear two things: that we’ve failed, and that we’ve wasted our time, effort, or money. We need to redefine what “failed” and “wasted” mean.

Quit Thinking about Waste

Our lives are better if we have a larger portfolio of skills and opportunities available to us. The myopia that goals cause limits the size of that portfolio, because we don’t look for or see alternatives.

You’re already familiar with the problem of opportunity cost neglect. Goal setting can exacerbate this issue. Once we settle on a finish line and a path to get us there, we become myopic, failing to explore other paths that might be available to us or other finish lines that might be better for us to head toward. We don’t see them, and that’s not j

Goal-Induced Myopia