Giving up can be painful. That's why we need to talk about it. Today: stories about glitchy apps, leaky paint cans, broken sculptures — and a quest for the perfect bowl of ramen. SOURCES:John Boykin, website designer and failed paint can re-inventor.Angela Duckworth, host of No Stupid Questions, co-founder of Character Lab, and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.Amy Edmondson, professor of leadership management at Harvard Business School.Helen Fisher, former senior research fellow at The Kinsey Institute and former chief science advisor to Match.com.Eric von Hippel, professor of technological innovation at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management.Jill Hoffman, founder and C.E.O. of Path 2 Flight.Gary Klein, cognitive psychologist and pioneer in the field of naturalistic decision making.Steve Levitt, host of People I (Mostly) Admire, co-author of the Freakonomics books, and professor of economics at the University of Chicago.Joseph O’Connell, artist.Mike Ridgeman, government affairs manager at the Wisconsin Bike Fed.Melanie Stefan, professor of physiology at Medical School Berlin.Travis Thul, vice president for Student Success and Engagement at Minnesota State University, Mankato. RESOURCES:“Data Snapshot: Tenure and Contingency in US Higher Education,” by Glenn Colby (American Association of University Professors, 2023).Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, by Angela Duckworth (2016).“Entrepreneurship and the U.S. Economy,” by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2016).“A C.V. of Failures,” by Melanie Stefan (Nature, 2010).Ramen Now! official website. EXTRAS: “How to Succeed at Failing,” series by Freakonomics Radio (2023).“Annie Duke Thinks You Should Quit,” by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).“How Do You Know When It’s Time to Quit?” by No Stupid Questions (2020).“Honey, I Grew the Economy,” by Freakonomics Radio (2019).“The Upside of Quitting,” by Freakonomics Radio (2011).
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Hey there, Steven Dubner. Today, we're continuing our update of a series on failure we published a couple years ago called How to Succeed at Failing. In this episode, you will hear some personal stories from people who tried something new and failed. One of those people is Travis Thull, who thought what the world really needed was a new way to make instant ramen.
Stay tuned to the end to hear how that worked out. We have updated all facts and figures as necessary. As always, thanks for listening. We've been making Freakonomics Radio for a while now, and there are two themes we have come back to again and again. The first is the value of persistence, of staying the course, not giving up.
Our friend Angela Duckworth, a research psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote a book about this. It's called Grit, the Power of Passion and Perseverance. Here she is on another podcast we used to make together called No Stupid Questions.
I think the reason why there are all these aphorisms about not giving up and maybe why so much of my research has focused on the psychology of staying the course is that sometimes the road not taken, the track that you want to switch to, is appealing not because it is objectively better, but because it's objectively easier just in the short run.
Chapter 2: What lessons can we learn from failures?
Chapter 3: What does Angela Duckworth say about persistence?
I think the reason why there are all these aphorisms about not giving up and maybe why so much of my research has focused on the psychology of staying the course is that sometimes the road not taken, the track that you want to switch to, is appealing not because it is objectively better, but because it's objectively easier just in the short run.
In other words, we give up because we're lazy or maybe impatient or intimidated or we're scared to fail. That makes sense, doesn't it? Duckworth is saying we might be better off by learning to tough it out. But the other theme we have often explored is pretty much the opposite of grit. Back in 2011, we made an episode called The Upside of Quitting.
Here's my Freakonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt more recently.
It is a compliment to be called a quitter precisely because we live in a world where so many forces push us to persist far too long at failing endeavors.
Now, Levitt is an economist, not a psychologist, and his ideas about quitting come from basic economic concepts. One of them is called opportunity cost. That's the idea that every dollar or hour or brain cell you spend doing one thing is a dollar, an hour or a brain cell you can't spend on some other opportunity. There is another idea called the sunk cost fallacy.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Steve Levitt provide on quitting?
A sunk cost is a time or money or effort you've already spent. The fallacy is the belief that since you've already spent all those resources, you would be foolish to quit. But in reality, this is what economists argue, at least, those sunk costs are a distraction. And if what you're doing isn't likely to work out, you should stop throwing good money and time and effort after bad.
Now, that makes sense too, doesn't it? But it does leave you with a dilemma. If you are in the middle of a project or a career, a relationship or a journey, and it's not going so well, how do you know whether the answer is grit or quit? What a great question. I don't think there's an easy answer to that.
Amy Edmondson and Gary Klein have both built their research careers around the study of failure.
There's no objective criteria that are going to announce themselves to say go right, go left. So you're going to have to make a judgment.
It's a question of what kind of resources you have, what's your tolerance for pain, what are the alternatives. There's that kind of reluctance to admit that you've wasted all of these resources.
If you're a child learning to ride a bicycle, please don't quit. If you're someone who thinks this particular paper is the best thing ever published and every single journal rejects it, there does come a point where it's probably worth quitting.
The thing about quitting is that it is usually seen as an admission of failure. And so we are solemnly counseled to never quit. Consider Winston Churchill.
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Chapter 5: How did Travis Thul attempt to innovate ramen cooking?
Chapter 6: What challenges did Jill Hoffman face in her startup?
It's a question of what kind of resources you have, what's your tolerance for pain, what are the alternatives. There's that kind of reluctance to admit that you've wasted all of these resources.
If you're a child learning to ride a bicycle, please don't quit. If you're someone who thinks this particular paper is the best thing ever published and every single journal rejects it, there does come a point where it's probably worth quitting.
The thing about quitting is that it is usually seen as an admission of failure. And so we are solemnly counseled to never quit. Consider Winston Churchill.
Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never. In nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
You'll run into that Churchill quote in a lot of the literature around grit. But context matters. Churchill gave that speech at his old school in October of 1941, when Britain was almost single-handedly trying to hold off Nazi Germany in World War II. The threat his country faced was literally existential. So you can see why quitting wasn't an attractive option.
But for the rest of us, in most situations where we're thinking about grit versus quit, the decision isn't nearly as obvious. As we've been discussing in this series, we humans are almost pathologically afraid of failure. What we like are stories of success and of perseverance.
So the best possible story is the one where our hero encounters many struggles, but shows grit, refuses to quit, and ultimately wins the battle. Those are the stories we hear in fairy tales, in lectures, in books. But shouldn't we spend some time hearing the failure stories too? Can't they be as instructive as the success stories? This is an idea I've been kicking around for a long time.
It goes back to when I was in graduate school for writing. Most of us were young, earnest, hardworking writers. And it seemed that the obvious path to success was to emulate other successful writers. So we read and wrote and read and wrote and read some more. And we wrote a lot of short stories that tried to be Raymond Carver, a lot of novels that tried to be Virginia Woolf.
I did not find this to be a fruitful path. It struck me that great writers are great because of some unique combination of factors that are by definition inimitable. So why are we trying to imitate their success? But there was something I found really instructive when I read the other students' writing and it didn't work.
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Chapter 7: How do we define success and failure in entrepreneurship?
Chapter 8: What can we learn from historical figures about grit and quitting?
But, hey, I've got the microphone today, so I'm going to go for it. Today on Freakonomics Radio, an episode full of failures.
Sometimes I thought, like, this will never be me, right? Like, I will never be that successful.
I respect tenacity. Sometimes tenacity is directed in a non-productive direction.
If you fail as a woman, you had no business being there in the first place.
Every single bit of feedback we received was, this is a great idea, but... Grit versus quit.
Which side are you on? Part three of our special series, How to Succeed at Failing, begins right now.
This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.
Let's begin our stories about failure in a domain where failure lurks around every corner. Invention. I'd like you to meet our first victim.
Fantastic. Travis Thull. I'm a director of operations and senior fellow at the University of Minnesota. Also a reserve Coast Guard officer currently serving with the joint staff.
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