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. (Part three of a four-part series.) 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).
Full 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.
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.
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.
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