← Something You Should Know
Something You Should Know
What’s Really Controlling Your Money? & When to Quit
00:48:02
What’s influencing your money, how to know when to quit, and a simple trick to improve your driving.
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I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation. I wanted to let you know about a brand new season of the Planet Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. This is the podcast exploring bold ideas and big solutions from the people leading the way in conservation. Join me in conversation with the likes of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, biologist and photographer Christina Mittermeier, and one of the most successful conservationists of our time, Chris Tompkins. Join us on Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts.
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Today on something you should know how a quick trip to the kitchen can help you be a better driver then hidden factors that affect your money. Technology, algorithms, even credit cards.
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A
There is this strange economics going on where the banks, they want you to use their credit cards so they can charge these fees, but then stores have to pay those fees. So what do stores do? They raise their prices. So now we're paying higher prices because of credit card fees.
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B
Also, why does your eye sometimes just start twitching and quitting anything? A job, a relationship? There are bad ways to quit and good ways to quit.
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And really, I guess what it comes down to is a wise or a good quit is one that in which an individual quits for the right reasons, at the right time and in the right way. And any one of those we can
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screw up all this today on something you should know this time of year. Springtime always does this to me. I start looking at my closet thinking I don't need more clothes, I just need better clothes. Fewer things, but ones I actually want to wear. Which is why I keep going back to Quince. Their stuff. It just feels easy. The fabrics are great, like their linen pieces, which are perfect for this time of year. Lightweight, breathable, but they still look so put together. I've also been wearing their pants and polos a lot. They've become my default. Comfortable, good fit. And they hold up. And then you look at the price and it's like wait, really? Because Quince cuts out the middleman. So you're getting quality materials without paying for a name brand. Which honestly makes getting dressed a lot simpler. And my wife buys almost all of her clothes from Quince too. Refresh your wardrobe with quince. Go to quince.comsysk for free shipping and 360 doll 65 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to Quincom Sysk for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comSYSK
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Something you should know. Fascinating intel the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today.
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Something you should know with Mike Carruthers. So drinking alcohol and driving is a horrible idea, but drinking water and driving is a spectacular idea. I'm Mike Carruthers, and that is what we're going to start with today on this episode of Something youg Should Know. If you want to be the best driver you can be, drink some water first. Research shows that even mild dehydration, the kind you might have after a busy day, can impair your concentration, slow your reaction time, and increase fatigue. In one study, dehydrated drivers made significantly more errors during a long, monotonous drive. And it doesn't take much. Losing just 1 to 2% of your body's water can start to affect how well your brain functions, which means something as simple as not drinking enough water can quietly make it harder to focus, think clearly, and stay alert. So before you reach for caffeine or try to push through the mental fog, you might just try a glass of water. And that is something you should know a lot of. What determines how much money you have happens in ways you never see. It's not just how hard you work or how much money you earn. It's the economy, technology, the credit system, even algorithms, things, forces that quietly shape your financial life behind the scenes. So why does money seem to flow more easily to some people than others? And how much control do you really have over your money? My guest has spent years uncovering the hidden forces that influence your wallet and your bank account. Alex Miasi is a reporter for the podcast Planet Money, which I've recommended many times. And he's the author of a book called Planet Money, a guide to the economic forces that shape your life. Hey, Alex, welcome to something you should know.
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A
Hi, Mike. It's really nice to be here.
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B
Well, I have so many questions. There's so many things to talk about. I want to jump right in. And let's start with the superstar effect. Can you explain what that is and why it's important and how it affects money?
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A
Yeah. So the superstar effect is this idea that in certain fields, technology has really changed the range of outcomes. Did you grow up watching I Love Lucy?
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B
I did.
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A
So you probably know who Desi Arnaz is then.
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B
He is Ricky Ricardo.
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A
Right. So Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball are famous for having created the beloved sitcom I Love Lucy. But another way, what they did, and especially what Desi figured out, he really created the business model of television. He figured out how to make television really lucrative because TV was once this thing. It was almost like radio. And then they put a camera on it. They were like these little plays in front of a single camera. And so Desi and Lucille both figured out how to increase the production value of tv. But what they also did is, is they changed TV from something that you just kind of people watched once and then it was done. Like every TV show is live to something that you could watch anytime. Like, there was this point where I Love Lucy got really popular. And they had this incredible moment where they were pregnant in real life. And as Lucille Ball went into labor and gave birth, an episode of I Love Lucy where their characters on screen also had a baby. And it was incredibly popular. Everyone loved I Love Lucy. They were selling I Love Lucy merch. But then they had this problem, which is they couldn't make more episodes for a while. So Desi Arnaz basically invented the rerun, the fact that you could rerun episodes. And so now if you created TV show, it wasn't something you could just make money off of one time. You could do reruns again and again and again. And now we live in the world of streaming. So it's kind of the case that if you work in tv, if you are a superstar, if you make a beloved hit TV show like I Love Lucy or now Game of Thrones, everyone around the world can watch that TV show at pretty much any time. So if you are in the TV business, you are not just competing with other people making tv. Right now, you are competing with every person who has made TV ever. You are competing with the best TV shows ever made. Now you're competing with the best content ever made. And so what that means is that, you know, the superstars who make the very most famous and popular content, they really make an outsized share of the rewards of money. So if you are a singer, it used to be you go back in time, lots of people got paid to sing. And so singers, they could make some good money. But maybe they weren't fabulously wealthy. Even the most popular singers weren't fabulously, fabulously wealthy in the way that, say, Taylor Swift is today. Because the singers of today, people can listen to them all around the world. And if you're a kind of average singer, you might have been able to make a pretty good living back in the day, maybe 100 years ago, 200 years ago, what have you. But now you're competing against the very best singers and entertainers in the world. So it's much harder to make a living as a singer. Or musician, unless you're one of those people who are at the absolute top, in which case there are these huge returns for you. You can make a lot of money. Taylor Swift is a billionaire.
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B
And so how does that affect me? So what's the lesson that I should learn from that?
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I think something you can learn from that is think about. If we're thinking about younger people and you're choosing a career, what kind of career do you want to have? If you're someone who wants to be the very, very best at what you do, you're obsessed. You're going to work hard to be the top of your field. Being in an industry with superstar effects, that can be great for you. You could make really good money and your work will really pay off. Whereas if you would really prefer to have work life balance, you probably don't want to be in one of those because it's just really hard to make a living and have stability unless you're at the very top, you know, so maybe you want to be in a field like, say, nursing, where they don't really have the superstar effect. It's not like if you're a nurse, you're competing with the very best nurse in your field. You know, we need lots of nurses, and you can be a good nurse, but not the world's best nurse and, you know, still make a good salary and have career stability.
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Let's talk about tariffs, because you hear that word a lot in the news, but I'm not sure I understand completely all the little details of how tariffs work. And they clearly affect prices. So how do they work?
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A
Yeah, I mean, a very short answer is that a tariff is a tax on trade, right? So if you're going to bring goods across the border into the country, you know, at a port or across a land crossing, then it will be taxed. You know, if it's a 15% tariff, you know, take the value of that, good. It crosses the border, and whoever's importing it has to pay an extra 15% as a tax to the federal government. I think something that we've really seen over the past year that is a bit confusing or subtle about tariffs that trips people up is that you'll have one side say that tariffs are paid by foreigners, another say that that's a tax that's paid by the American people. And they're kind of both true. There's this element where the tax is paid by whoever is importing a product. That's often an American company. If these are American tariffs, but that company could choose to pass the cost of that, talks onto consumers, in which case Americans are just paid higher prices for goods. But it's also possible that the American company that's importing that product might say to the, the company they're trading with, maybe the Chinese manufacturer, like, hey, because of this tariff, we're going to pay you less. And they'll force the tariff onto that Chinese manufacturer. And so in a way, the Chinese manufacturer is paying that tariff. And so it can be different in different cases. And it's kind of a matter of leverage. Right. Like, companies might want to just increase the cost for customers, their customers. But maybe customers are really price sensitive and they're worried that won't work. So maybe they'll just eat the cost themselves. Or maybe the, you know, the importer, the American company that's importing, you know, TVs or what have you, you know, they'll be able to say to the Chinese company, the Chinese manufacturer, we, we're just going to pay you less because we have to pay this tariff. But if the Chinese manufacturer could say, screw you, I'm just going to sell these TVs elsewhere, then no. Yep, that, that the American company is going to have to pay the tariff. So there is something tricky about tariffs where it is often hard to say definitively who is paying them.
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B
One factor that seems to be affecting people's money and the economy in a big way is AI because people are concerned that it's going to. Or that it is replacing jobs, putting people out of work. So I'm curious what you have to say about it.
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A
One thing I think about a lot is what happened with bank tellers. And so there's this great researcher, great research done by a professor at Boston University that looked at what happened to bank tellers when automated teller machines started getting installed at banks. Right. This is a machine who's literally automated teller machine, and you're a bank teller. What's going to happen to you? This is a machine literally designed to automate your job. And the surprising thing he found is that for decades, the number of bank tellers employed by banks continued to go up. Not like fast. You know, it was, it was slow growth. But, you know, the number of bank tellers did not go down. It kept going up for decades. But then there were kind of two things that happened that help explain why bank tellers were not. Did not go to extinction because of ATMs. One is this kind of interesting phenomenon where sometimes technology that automates part of your job, it will actually make it so much cheaper to do that thing that companies do more of it. So in this case banks, by installing ATMs, the cost of running a bank branch went down. And as a result, they didn't say, oh, okay, let's fire all the bank tellers. They said, oh, great, let's open more bank branches. And so the number of tellers at each branch went down, but because they were opening new branches to serve more customers, the number of tellers went up. And another is this dynamic that there are some cases where machines or technology just automate 100% of someone's job, but it's actually more common that a part of your job is automated. Researchers, economists like to say that tasks are automated, not jobs. So for bank tellers, maybe they spent less time counting cash and handing it to customers because the ATM could do that. But that meant that the bank tellers had more time to do things that ATMs cannot do, like talk to customers and say, hey, have you thought about signing up for a credit card with our bank? Or, hey, we have great financial advisors who could help you plan for retirement. And so a machine explicitly designed to automate their job didn't necessarily put them out of work because they could do other things with the team the time that it freed up. So I think about bank tellers as everyone is fretting, as many of us are fretting about AI. And I wouldn't say that that means you should just be sanguine. And definitely there can never be bad repercussions of automation. There certainly are people who can be hurt by automation, lose their jobs. But I think the big takeaway is that a lot of these transitions are not as fast and sudden as you might think. There's time to adjust, and it's less that jobs just go away, and it's more that jobs change. And it's important to be adaptable.
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Well, I guess the scary thing about AI is the atmosphere affected jobs for bank tellers, but not many other people. AI affects all kinds of jobs.
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I think it is really important at a time like this when there's the potential for automation to impact a lot of jobs. You know, something like AI is perhaps a general purpose technology that could impact all sorts of jobs as opposed to the atm, that just more impacted bank tellers. And so I think that's a case where it is really important for, like politicians and all of us should be thinking about, you know, how can we help workers who will be impacted by this or might be impacted by this.
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B
Credit cards have become such an integral part of people's financial life today. And I know they impact our money in ways that a lot of people may not realize. So I want to ask you about that next. You ever notice how a lot of people have a business idea and it just kind of sits there, not because it's a bad idea, but because starting it feels like such a project. You've got to figure out a website and payments and marketing. It's a lot. That's why I love Shopify. It takes all of that and puts it in one place so you can actually just start. You can build a store really quickly using their templates, and it doesn't look like something you just threw together. It looks fabulous. And their AI tools help with things like product descriptions, headlines, even photos, which is usually where people get stuck. And once it's up, Shopify helps you find customers too. Email, social, all built in. So you're not sitting there wondering, okay, now what? It's why so many businesses use Shopify. From big brands to people just getting started, it's time to turn those what ifs into into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.comSYSK go to shopify.comSYSK that's shopify.comSYSK
- [17:11]
A
K Pop Demon Hunters, Haja Boy's Breakfast Meal and Hunt Tricks meal have
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C
just dropped at McDonald's.
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A
They're calling this a battle for the fans.
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C
What do you say to that, roomy?
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A
It's not a battle.
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C
So glad the Saja boys could take
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breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
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A
It is an honor to share.
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B
No, it's our honor.
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A
It is our larger honor.
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B
No, really, stop.
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A
You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side
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B
and participate in McDonald's while supplies last. We're talking about the forces that affect your money, some of which you may not realize. I'm speaking with Alex Miassi from the podcast Planet Money, and he's author of a book called Planet Money, a guide to the economic forces that shape your life. So let's talk about credit, Alex. Specifically credit cards, since they've become. They've really become the tool we use to buy so many things.
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A
Credit cards, when they were invented, were kind of incredible. Where they, they. It's this really hard chicken and egg problem that, you know, to get stores to accept credit cards, you need lots of customers who are already using them. To get customers to want to use them, you need lots of stores signed up. So banks and credit Card companies did this really useful service of getting both customers and stores to adopt them. And for stores, it was, you know, it was this great deal. It was like, hey, you're chasing down all these little debts from customers, keeping track of how much your customers owe you. We'll take all that on, we'll pay you quickly and promptly, and then we'll take on all the pain and annoyance of, you know, getting those bills paid. And it was, you know, it was a, it was a good deal and it made it possible to, you know, use your visa card, your MasterCard, all over the world. But I think as time has gone on, the ability to move money from one bank to another, that's become a lot easier thanks to technology. But credit cards still charge these very high fees. I don't think customers think about them that often, but every time you use a credit card at a store, there's a good chance that the credit card companies and banks are charging that store maybe two and a half percent of the cost of the transaction as a fee for, you know, the credit card transaction. And that might not sound like a lot, but you have to remember that like for a restaurant or a coffee shop, their entire profit margin on the transaction might be 4%, maybe 2 1/2 percent. Maybe they just don't make any profit on some transactions and all goes to Visa. And so there, there is this strange economics going on where to customers, it just feels like you're getting offered free stuff. But the reason you're getting that free stuff is because, you know, the banks, they want you to use their credit cards so they can charge these fees, but then stores have to pay those fees. So what do stores do? They raise their prices. So now we're paying higher prices because of credit card fees. And so it's, it's very hidden. But there is this kind of pernicious reverse Robin Hood effect where, you know, if you're pretty wealthy, you have a good credit score score, you have this great credit card that gives you all sorts of miles and cash back. You know, you're paying a bit higher prices at stores because of credit card fees, but you probably get that back in the form of your points and miles and all those perks from your credit card. But for someone who doesn't have a great credit score, they don't have that much money. They're probably paying in cash or with the debit cards. They're not getting benefits. They just have to pay those higher fees that the store is charging because of credit card fees. But they're not getting that back. So there's this kind of indirect subsidy by lower income people of those points and cash back benefits that more affluent people get to enjoy.
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B
And well, I think I know the answer to this. But why is it that some retailers don't want to take American Express?
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A
Because American Express charges a really, really high transaction fee that they then use to pay out these really great benefits to, you know, their affluent customers. But, you know, lots of banks that use Visa or MasterCard have also over the past 10 plus years put out credit cards that give you really, really great rewards. And therefore they also charge those high fees more, similar to an American Express card. But stores can't say, no, no, no, we don't want to accept those higher fee credit cards because Visa says no. If you want to accept Visa, you got to accept all Visa cards, even the one with higher fees. And so this lawsuit was saying, hey, we shouldn't have to. You know, that's anti competitive behavior. And you know, a ruling did come down that, that sided with the retailers and stores against the credit card companies saying that they should be able to distinguish between, you know, credit cards with higher and lower fees. So it is possible we will see changes here. I think people who watch this closely are a bit skeptical that stores will really want to start charging fees to people who use some of these kind of like fancier credit cards. Those are often customers who, you know, it's just something you do. You really want to tell your customers, oh, hey, you have to use. It feels like nickel and dime and you have to pay a little bit more if you want to use that card. But that is one potential way that we might get to a better place with credit cards.
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B
The stock market has certainly changed from the days of where you would buy individual stocks. You needed a stockbroker. There were a lot of fees, and now people buy mutual funds. And how did that happen?
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A
What really changed was the rise of Vanguard. And Vanguard is Wall street firm, but not a place you go to to buy and sell individual stocks. The main thing you go to Vanguard for and what their original purpose was was index funds, as you said earlier, a way to, instead of buying and selling individual stocks, just more or less almost invest in the entire stock market. And so as the entire stock market grows because the economy tends to grow, then your money will grow too. Very simple, very basic. And they charge very, very, very low fees. And it took a while, but index funds really took off. And that has really squeezed all those people on Wall street, all those financiers who want you to give them their money and they want to charge you high fees because they're really smart and they know how to invest your money. They know how to pick winners. And I think for the most part, that has been a great development. Most research has consistently found that those active investors, the people who have been paid very, very healthy amounts of money to invest people's retirement savings for them, just were not worth the money we were paying them. People were better off with index funds. And the markets really responded. More and more and more money has flowed into index funds, and it's really squeezed a lot of those firms that used to make a really good living by convincing people to give me your investment savings and I'll invest it for you. And I think that's largely been an example of the middle class and the average person getting a better deal from Wall Street, a better deal from finance. The index fund is a fantastic financial product. And then it has been strange over the last years to see how the, the biggest trend in investing in finance, at least for kind of like your average consumer, is to use a product like Robinhood and treat the stock market more and more like gambling as something to have fun with, to make bets with. And I think that's, you know, there's a way where people have always seen Wall street as gambling in a way. But of course, this has made it more like, you know, the finance app on your phone is a casino in your pocket.
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B
But as we know, casinos, real gambling always favors the house, never favors the gambler.
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A
So, yes, and I think this is a thing I would love for more people to understand is that if you use an app like Robinhood, it is completely free, you can buy and sell stocks, and it doesn't cost you any money. And so there's a very good question you should ask yourself there. It's why is this free for me? And usually the answer is that you are able to buy and sell stocks for free because someone you know in finance on Wall street wants to be on the other side of your trade. And so they're willing to kind of front that cost, right? They are basically very happy to, like, take the other side of your trades because they think you are going to make bad trades. So they are willing to take the other side of your trades and your bets. And that is why you are able to buy and sell for free. Like, that is largely the reason why it is frictionless free to buy and sell stocks as an individual, average person nowadays. It's because lots of people on Wall street see you as dumb money and they want to take the other side of your trades because they think they will make money off of you in the same way that you're talking about. Like the house always wins.
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B
Well, this has been some really valuable and interesting insight into how the economy works, how our money works, what affects it. I really enjoyed this. I've been speaking with Alex Maassi from the podcast Planet Money and he's author of a book called Planet Money, a guide to the economic forces that shape your life. There's a link to that book in the show notes. And Alex, great. Thanks.
- [26:20]
A
Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate your questions and talking about this Spring Black Friday is on at the Home Depot. Save on grills and patio sets that will be sure to bring your hosting game up a notch. Fire up your feast with help from the Home Depot and save on grills like the next grill 4 burner propane gas grill was $249 now in special buy for $199 or give everyone the best seat in the yard with the Hampton bay Mayfield park four piece conversation set for only $399. Save on grills and patio sets with low prices guaranteed during Spring Black Friday only at the Home Depot now through April 22nd while supplies last exclusion supplies to homedepot.com Pricematch for details. You tell yourself no one wants your college era band tees, but on Depop, people are searching for exactly what you've got. You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on Depop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste would
- [27:16]
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- [27:20]
A
Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste.
- [27:28]
B
Quitting has a bad reputation. We're taught that quitters are losers, that success comes from grit, persistence and never giving up. And often that's true. But not always. Sometimes quitting is exactly the right move. In fact, knowing when to walk away and doing it well can be one of the smartest decisions you'll ever make. The real challenge is figuring out the difference when to push through and when to let go. And that is what Jeffrey Lockwood is here to discuss. He's a professor of Natural Sciences and Humanities at the University of Wyoming and author of the book the Good Mastering the Fine Art of Giving Up. Hi Jeffrey, welcome to Something youg Should Know.
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C
Hi Mike, thanks for Having me.
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B
So I think people have a very immediate reaction when they hear the word quit or quitting. It doesn't have a good connotation to it that quitting is not what you do. You persevere, you tough it out, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but you just don't quit. But you have a very different view of quitting. So explain what that is.
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C
Well, I wouldn't say that I am an advocate of quitting when the times get tough or when things get hard. But there is a kind of wisdom about quitting, knowing when and how and why to give up. And so quitting is, I think, is much more complicated than. That's a character flaw. It's part of living. And wise quitting is part of a full life.
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B
And your definition of wise quitting is what?
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C
I would say that wise quitting reflects, well, what the Greeks called phronesis, or practical wisdom. And it's kind of a combination of, you know, like, how should I put this book? Learning and street smarts.
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B
Right.
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C
It's. It's both rational thought, but it's also emotionally sophisticated. So it's a. It's a complicated endeavor or something that I think we get better at with practice. And really, I guess what it comes down to is a wiser good quit is one that in which an individual quits for the right reasons at the right time and in the right way. And any one of those, we can screw up.
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B
When you have something in your life that you're thinking about quitting, it is, to me, it's kind of the quintessential. You can't see the forest for the trees. You're so close to it that you can see, maybe I should quit, maybe I shouldn't. You can't really tell. You need some perspective.
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C
One of the things that we can do in terms of trying to decide whether this is a good quit is to engage our friends, to engage mentors, people we respect. Ask them, am I quitting too easily? Or conversely, am I foolishly persisting? And then you move on. You look at it and. But I think we need to learn from a quit. Well, did that do what I wanted it to do, or should I have hung in there a little bit longer? And so it's possible that we can regret. And regret is a sign that we should or could have done otherwise. And that's part of learning.
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B
Yeah, but it could also just be you regret because you don't know. And now it's the road not taken. And then you can fantasize about how wonderful it might have been, but you don't really know. And maybe quitting was a good idea. I mean, who. When I think of quitting, mostly I think of when I first hear the word, I think of like a job. I think, you know, quit your job and when do you quit and how unbearable does it have to get or what has to happen and should you hang in there and, you know, and that's always a tough one because, you know, it's easier to get another job if you've already got one, but the job you have may just be horrible. So I don't. It's really hard.
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C
You talk about quitting work and that's, that's, you know, we had. What do they call it, the great resignation. You know, following Covid, where there was this unprecedented wave of resignation, something like 4 million jobs a month were being. Were being quit. And people were doing it for all kinds of reasons. Greater pay, greater flexibility, family time, benefits, plus burnout and health risks. And all of those are going to be radically individualized. You know, the Greeks talked about virtue, right? And virtue was sort of leading a life that fulfilled the human potential. But they realized, you know, even back then that not all people have the same capacities. And so the famous example is, you know, what is courageous for a civilian might be cowardly for a soldier. And so we have different capacities, different abilities, different tolerances. How much stress can you take? You know, how much. How much anxiety can you take? How much does move? Does putting up with this position set you up to. To move to a better position within that company versus jumping ship? And you start factoring in all of those considerations and you end up with some, I guess, giant spreadsheet filled with numbers that are incommensurable. You can't add apples and oranges. How much is a $20,000 cut in pay worth vs indigestion, sleepless nights and an ulcer? Money vs health? What are those trade offs? It's not going to be something that we're going to be able to apply a formula to. Same thing with personal relationships. How long do you hang in with an employer? How long do you hang in with a partner? How long do you hang in with a club or an organization? And then the other big realm of quitting is conflicts, contests, and wars. Imagine the difficulty that everybody, from the soldier to the general to the president faces in terms of when do we surrender? When is it a lost cause?
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B
When is it a lost cause? That's kind of a key question, isn't it? When is this, like, when do you decide this is never going to get better? It's never going to be right, it's time to go. And usually it seems like you have to get hit in the head a few times before it finally dawns on you that this isn't going to get better. So quitting probably shouldn't be your first reaction.
- [34:22]
C
No, I don't think so. If it was worth starting, then, it's probably worth playing out to some degree now. You might say, maybe quitting is not an irrational sort of early judgment, say, in a blind date. And so at the end of the evening you go, wow, that's not worth following up. But you haven't invested much. And so I'm not even sure that I would be wanting to call that a quit, because nothing ever really got started. You didn't have any, you didn't have any stake. But then, of course, the more, the more you put into an endeavor, the more difficult it is to quit. And that kind of makes sense. But then we have to. We have to be also concerned about whether we're being foolish and using the kind of, of reasoning like, well, I've. I've already put four years into this relationship, I've already put five years into this job. I can't quit now or all of that investment is going to be gone. And that can be kind of fallacious or dangerous thinking as well.
- [35:31]
B
You know, I was just thinking about this as you were talking, because I hadn't thought about this in a long time because I was raised in a family. You know, my father always said, you know, you gotta stick it out. You can't just walk away. You know, that's not, not what real men do. But I had a job once. I got hired for a job that I thought I really wanted. And as soon as I got in there, and I hadn't even started yet, but I was training, I was learning how to do what I was supposed to do. I just got such a bad vibe. And also realized that my hope was one day to work my way up the ladder. I was starting, not at the bottom, but I wasn't. This was not a job I really wanted, but this is how you had to get up the ladder. And then I realized, well, the people up the ladder had been there for a long time and they never leave, they're never going to go, and I'm going to be stuck down here, and I don't like these people. And I quit before I started. I said, nope, I'm sorry, and I walked away and really upset a lot of people because. But I have no regret about that at all, you know, that.
- [36:44]
C
That almost falls in the cake. I mean, quits can be very, very easy. Very hard. I guess if they're really, really easy, then, you know, in some ways we'd be reluctant to even call them a quit because we've not, you know, we've not really begun or. It's a very fleeting obligation. But taking a job, it does seem one of the things you're avoiding is, is what's, you know, sometimes called, you know, the sunk cost. Right. I've already sunk so much in that I can't, you know, I can't get out. Governments do that all the time. I mean, that's, you know, you talk about trying to get out of a war. We've already lost this many lives. How can we give up now? Versus, like a job where you, you, you have this sense very early on that something is not right, this is not going anywhere. Maybe it wasn't the employment equivalent of the first date, but you weren't very far in. Right. And so getting out and in some ways, I mean, not only are you doing yourself a favor, but then that company has not invested a whole lot of training and time and resources in you either. And so that might have been the best thing for all the parties concerned if you weren't going to flourish. But again, you know, that's, you know, that's the tough part, right, Is, Is, you know, the delay of gratification.
- [38:03]
B
Well, I bring it up just because sometimes quitting is a struggle. And I did struggle a little with this, but not a lot. You know, this was one of the few times that quitting just seemed to be the right thing to do. But there are plenty of other times where it's. It's much more unclear we should reflect on our quits.
- [38:26]
C
I think that's very important if we're going to mature, if we're going to develop into a. What a good quitter. Right. A practiced quit. And quitter is an interesting term. We can explore that later if you wish. But if we're going to get better at quitting, right. If we're going to get better at anything, right. We have to practice it and then we have to reflect. And one of the possibilities is after time we reflect and think, oh, that was badly done, right. Or that was badly timed, or I could have quit this partially rather than entirely. That's. We could do partial quits as well. I didn't have to give up everything, right. I Could have just given up part of something. I mean, so one possibility is we think we could have done better, right? Regret. But the other possibility is, damn, I got that one right. And I'm going to learn from that When I get into something and all of the signs are, this is not working. I am not going to punish myself indefinitely out of a sense of misplaced pride or identity or messages from others. And you know, I'm speaking for you, I learned something important about myself and about quitting, and I got that one right.
- [39:44]
B
But I would imagine that most people who face the decision of whether to quit or not, it isn't quite so clear. It's either, it's murky, it's what happens if I stick it out. And I guess the question is, so what's the criteria that you use to decide is this a good time to quit or should I stick it out a little longer and reevaluate? What's the, what are the questions you ask yourself to come to some sort of answer?
- [40:17]
C
I think the questions are first and foremost, why am I quitting? Is it something where the harm that I'm facing is not worth, is not worth continuing? Or is it, this is just really difficult for me right now, or I think I deserve better. I mean, sometimes we can think very grandiosely about ourselves, and so we need to think, why am I thinking about quitting? And I think we need to use trusted others to reflect on that. Once we've decided that we're quitting for the right reasons, then I think we have to think about, is now the right time to quit? And so even quitting something that one ought to quit or it would be beneficial to quit, I think it's possible to quit too soon. It's also possible to endure too long. And so when to quit is important. And then also what to quit. I mean, I know people, I mean, here's, here's a really simple quit, right? So people will say, well, I'm going to become a vegetarian, I'm going to quit all meat. And what they find after time is that they come to realize, well, you know, I don't know that some meat once a week is, I'll cut back, it'll be very different diet. But I don't have to give something up entirely. So what to quit, why quit? When to quit? And then, you know, if once you've got all of those figured out, it's still possible to ask yourself, it's important to ask yourself, how am I going to quit? Right? So let's Go back to your job, right? You ask, why am I. Why do I want to quit? And you're thinking, well, there's a ceiling I'm never going to get to ascend in this company. That's a good reason to quit. What am I going to quit? The question is, do I have to quit the entire job or could I move, say, to another department? But then the other question that we all have to ask is, once we got that part done, the question is how to quit. And I've seen people who have quit for the right reasons at the right time and in the right amount, and then they botch how to quit because they do it. And they burn bridges, they insult others, they create unnecessary trauma and stress. Maybe they quit very publicly, hoping to embarrass the company. Can be a really disastrously bad move to do that out of anger.
- [42:45]
B
Yeah, well, that take this job and shove it approach does seem to have that. You know, it might feel good in the moment, but, boy, the consequences of burning that bridge and especially doing it in such a crappy way, that's gonna haunt you, I think, and come back and bite you.
- [43:04]
C
Oh, I think that's right. You know, the other thing you mentioned about, and sounds like you grew up in a family very much like mine, the message was, you don't quit. You just don't quit. You hang in there. And one of the things that's important about quitting, important to think about in quitting, is that what we do in our lives shapes our identity, who we are. And so quitting also shapes our identity. I'm the kind of person who doesn't put up with, or I'm the kind of person who gives up too easily or whatever the case is. So both persistence and quitting shape our identity. That's kind of inescapable. And then upon reflection, you think, is this the kind of person who I want to be? Right. Because quitting is a way of cultivating, fostering one's character. Who am I going to be?
- [43:57]
B
What you said earlier, I think is so true about getting other people's advice, because people have sought my advice, and it is so crystal clear to me what they ought to do, but it isn't to them. And I'm sure the roles have been reversed where I struggle with the answer. And other people have said, what, are you, nuts? Of course you want to get out of there, or, no, don't quit, you got to stay, because here's why. But it's clearer to them because they're not involved, than it Is to me.
- [44:29]
C
No, I think that's absolutely right. And I think choosing who shall we call it your mentors, advisors is, you know, is really important. And, you know, it's kind of funny. We have this kind of, this, what would you call it, socially correct notion that we ought not to judge, right? That we ought to be neutral, that we ought to support people no matter what. But I don't want friends who are going to support me when I'm doing something stupid. I don't think they're friends. I think they should be asking me hard questions. Why are you quitting? What are you quitting? When are you quitting? And how do you plan to do this Quitting? You know, a good friend is brutally, lovingly frank.
- [45:14]
B
You mentioned earlier that we could talk about the word quitting later on, and this is later on. So what about the word quitting?
- [45:24]
C
Well, the reason I think that we have such a negative valence about quitting is because we've conflated quitting with being a quitter. All right? I mean, take Simone Biles, right? The gold medal gymnast. What is it? The last Olympics, she had this psychological physiological disorder, the swirlies, right? And she was unable to perform her athletic feats. And she decided that she was going to leave the team, that she was endangering herself and she was no longer an asset to her teammates. And people had all of these responses, right? And people wanted to label her a quitter, which was just completely ridiculous. You look at her athletic record, the number of gold medals, the woman is not a quitter. But because we conflate having quit with being a quitter, she worked really, really hard to try to avoid the phrase I quit. But she did quit. She really did quit. And she exemplified a good quit. She quit at the right time in the right way for the right reasons. Right. It was a beautiful example of a good quit. But because quit has such this a negative sense about it, she would not say that she had quit. And I think she did. I think it was a wonderful quit from which we could all learn something. But her detractors said, ah, she's a quitter.
- [46:54]
B
Well, this is a great topic to discuss, primarily because it's so seldom discussed and yet we all face those circumstances, those situations where we're torn between staying and going. And I think this is really helpful. I've been speaking with Jeffrey Lockwood. He's author of the book the Good Mastering the Fine Art of Giving up. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Jeffrey, thank you. Have you ever had your eyes start twitching first, no apparent reason, feels weird, and it usually is harmless. That twitch is called eyelid myokimia, and it's basically a tiny muscle spasm caused by overactive nerve signals. And here's the interesting part. The most common triggers are things most of us deal with every stress, lack of sleep, caffeine, even too much screen time. In other words, it's not random. It's your body telling you that your system's a little overloaded. The good news is it almost always goes away on its own. But if it does stick around for weeks or spreads beyond the eyelid, that's when doctors say you should have that checked out. So that annoying little twitch is not your eye malfunctioning, it's your nervous system asking you to dial things back a notch. And that is something you should know. So there are two things you could do to really help support this podcast. One is write a review and leave a rating on whatever app you're listening on. And also tell someone else about the podcast and get them to listen, which helps us grow our audience. One or both of those things would be fabulous. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Ever spend all day fishing and catch nothing? That's what happens to hackers when Cisco
- [48:50]
A
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B
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