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So many people are quitting their jobs right now.
Did you notice that?
One work survey by Microsoft says 40% of people globally,
40%, want to quit their jobs.
46%, even if they don't quit, are going to make big
ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.
There's definitely some science here.
So let's kick into it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, all.
Trace here.
Maybe you just watched my unlisted video
about what's going on in my life.
If you haven't, I'll put it up here.
But in light of my overwhelmedness,
I just quit one of my jobs.
I know.
I just talked about how many jobs I have
and all the stuff that's going on,
and I just quit one of them.
[LAUGHS] And now I'm, like, elated.
I feel like the whole world is open to me.
I can do anything.
I can take control, and it just feels great.
People are quitting a lot right now.
Almost 4 million people quit their jobs
in April alone, April.
There's a name for it.
It's called the turnover crisis, or the great resignation.
So why does quitting feel so good?
That's what I'm going to explore today.
We're told by our crappy mass-produced art
to follow our dreams and shoot for the moon
and land amongst the whatever.
There's not a lot of moderation in those things, right?
The inspiration economy, as I'm calling it,
has exploded, right?
Products, talks, stories, Etsy shops,
people telling you how to succeed, how to fix yourself,
how to stay the course, how to live, laugh, and--
I can't even say it.
Winners never quit, and quitters never win.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
My mom said that all the time.
Hi, Mom.
I know you're watching this, and I love you.
But, you know, you said it a lot.
There isn't any overpriced wall decal
that said, "It's OK to admit something's not for you."
"Drop that project.
It's crap."
"Don't like that book?
Quit reading it."
We should definitely drive to better ourselves
and strive for a goal, something to reach for.
But we should also remember that there's always,
always an off ramp.
And now that I have quit, what comes next?
I don't know.
And that uncertainty is often enough
to make people question what they're doing,
because the problem is most people don't assess decisions
dispassionately.
We're tangled up in our emotions and our responsibilities,
how our parents and friends and kids and role models
might see us.
And there are a lot of things that keep us from quitting.
And one of those is that uncertainty.
Another is the sunk cost fallacy,
and a third is cognitive dissonance.
Humans hate uncertainty.
Like, we hate it.
Most people will choose to be unhappy
doing something that they know rather than jumping
into something they don't any day of the week.
They will stick to a restaurant they know
rather than try a restaurant that is new.
This is the thing that I have to deal with all the time
because Flavia prefers to go to a restaurant she knows.
They'll keep wearing shoes that are breaking down and wearing
out or out of style or whatever rather than going out
to find new shoes, even if they want to.
These are all sunk costs because they think,
well, I spent money on these shoes, and they're still good.
I can still wear them.
I shouldn't-- and it's like, but they're breaking down,
and you're actually hurting yourself and walking funny
and damaging your body.
You should probably get new ones.
No, no, no.
It's fine.
It's fine, because uncertainty and sunk cost
work together there to keep you in the broken shoes.
The sunk cost fallacy goes like this--
I put a lot of effort into a job.
I should just stay.
That's not actually logical, but it feels logical.
It's not.
Just because you were there doesn't
mean you have to stay there.
I'm going to tell you a secret.
You ready?
You ready for this?
If I don't like a book I'm reading, I stop reading it.
I'll start reading it.
I'll get through a few chapters.
And then if I don't like it, I'll just quit.
I'm not a quitter.
I'm just aware of the sunk cost fallacy.
Having read the book yesterday doesn't
mean I have to keep reading the book today.
That time wasn't wasted or lost.
No one cares that I did or didn't do it.
Instead, think of it as time spent
learning if this book was something that you liked.
If I keep reading a book that I don't like,
isn't that a waste of time?
Instead, I should find a book I like.
It's the same with a job, with a relationship, or kind
of anything.
So that's the sunk cost fallacy.
And these are pretty low-level things.
The fear of uncertainty plus the fallacy of sunk cost
might keep people from reaching their potential.
So it's just important to recognize it,
because that fear of uncertainty is serious.
It drives your aunt to explain away
that uncertainty of a pandemic with wild and extraordinary
conspiracy theories.
It triggers people to lash out at others
because of their own fear of the unknown.
And it can really mess us up.
Certainty, knowing-- that feels good.
Uncertainty feels risky or scary or unacceptable.
So the third thing is cognitive dissonance.
This is like the bad trifecta.
That cycle isn't easy to break out
of without some good self-awareness.
And to get there, let me tell you a story.
In the 1950s, a woman named Mrs. Keech started
her own little cult. She convinced lots of fellow humans
that she was certain that aliens had been contacting her.
They were warning her of a disaster that was
coming to destroy the world.
But they'd come save her and her followers-- how convenient--
if she followed them.
She started to convince others, and people quit their jobs.
Others left school, some abandoned their families,
and they joined Mrs. Keech's cult.
All the while, though, a social psychologist
at the University of Minnesota was keeping tabs
on the situation.
He was following along to see what might happen.
What happens if Mrs. Keech's certainty does not play out?
That social psychologist is Leon Festinger.
He was studying the human issues with cognitive dissonance.
This idea that he came up with-- that we can't hold competing
or mutually exclusive thoughts in our heads at the same time.
Cognitive dissonance is why it's hard to convince people
that we're wrong.
Instead, it wants us to believe the decision we've made
is the right one, even if all evidence points
to the contrary.
Otherwise, we'd have to question every decision we made, right?
If we were wrong about that, why couldn't we
be wrong about everything?
The brain is lazy, like I said.
It doesn't want to do that.
And instead, we will double down.
So what happened to Mrs. Keech's cult?
Well, the aliens-- they never came.
Unsurprisingly, the world did not end.
But rather than snapping out of their cult
like trance, which they would do on television, in real life,
it was actually even more interesting
because the followers wrote letters and called newspapers
to try and convince others that Mrs. Keech was right all along
even though there was no evidence to show that.
Even though she was wrong and the aliens never showed up
and the world never ended, why?
Because it physically hurt them to be wrong.
Cognitive dissonance is emotionally painful.
And changing our thoughts and our behaviors
requires rewiring our brain physically.
The cult followers couldn't reconcile
that they've wasted their time in the cult,
and they were wrong.
So they doubled down.
This is all real.
This all happened.
Does this sound familiar to anybody?
I had a job where I had Netflix on the whole day all the days.
I actually made it all the way through the entire seasons
of Monk, all of the series.
It was a great program.
Tony Shalhoub is a treasure.
Was I a bad worker?
Objectively, yeah, I was.
Subjectively, I convinced myself that I just
didn't have enough work to fill my day
because cognitive dissonance would show that I can't
be a good worker and also watch Netflix all day,
which isn't work.
And I also can't be a bad worker and a good worker
at the same time.
So instead, I convinced myself of this other thing.
And I was totally justifiable in my terrible actions that way
because holding both of those thoughts
that I was bad at my job while also believing
I was good at my job in my head at the same time is impossible.
It's competing philosophies.
The sunk cost fallacy plus cognitive dissonance
means that we might spend a lot of time
doing things that we don't want to do
and convincing ourselves that we are right.
And when you add uncertainty, the little glue of uncertainty
to that, you get quite the crap cake.
My point being you can quit.
Just quit.
I was raised never to quit, never to quit with no reason.
When it came to quitting, my dad would always say,
because isn't a reason.
You want to quit?
Why?
Because.
Because why?
What is your reasoning?
That lesson came to a cinematic conclusion
my senior year of high school.
And I'll tell you the story.
I was never great at sports, but I'd stuck with track and field.
I joined in middle school, and I ran track,
and I did 800, the mile, to 2 mile, the long jump,
and a couple other things.
And I got to know these coaches and teammates.
And after all that, everyone looks forward to one thing,
and that's being a senior.
The seniors got this incredible power
to lead exercises during practice
to help train the freshmen.
They hold leadership positions.
I had spent years looking forward to this.
And one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Zilaskowski--
he was the science teacher, obviously,
also the track coach.
I had to tell Mr. Z, one of my favorite teachers,
that I had to quit.
Wasn't easy.
I remember it vividly.
It was raining that day.
Thanks.
You know, my life is a movie.
I walked up to Mr. Z's desk.
It was on the second floor of our new school building
that they just built-- so exciting.
And I told him that I couldn't be in track this year.
I had to quit.
And I couldn't come out for my senior season.
And he was visibly annoyed.
He was definitely a little upset.
You know, I may have caught him off guard.
But I just had to get it out, and I had to say it,
and it just felt like the right day to do it.
I don't know why, maybe because it was raining.
But I had to stay the course and commit, he said.
I needed to stick with it, and he needed me.
And I couldn't.
I couldn't do it for him.
I had to quit.
And quitting tore me apart emotionally.
I had never let anyone down like that before, especially someone
I cared about.
So I left the classroom, and I walked downstairs out
of the school into the rain.
I didn't put my jacket on.
I just didn't even have the mental/emotional energy
to do that.
I let it soak into my clothes.
I let him down, and it still stings.
It's still stings.
But that experience didn't make me not want
to quit anything ever again.
I did it for a reason.
I was 17 years old.
And you need to do all of the work
to be an Eagle Scout before your 18th birthday.
That's hundreds of work hours from dozens of volunteers,
and you got to organize it and write it up,
get lumber donated.
It takes so much time, and I needed those hours back
in my day.
I couldn't do track practice and events.
I couldn't commit all the time that I
would need to commit in order to be a good track and field
runner and jumper.
I achieved my goal.
I turned it all in just three days before my 18th birthday,
and I'm an Eagle Scout.
I will be forever.
I'm also still someone who ran track in high school.
I just didn't do it that last year.
I think I made the right call, but it wasn't easy.
And people are constantly saying, no one likes a quitter.
It's a very strong persevering message in American society,
and it's powerful.
And maybe you feel that way now.
No one likes a quitter.
But there are times when quitting isn't just valuable.
It's essential.
Maybe we should be quitting.
Walt Disney said, "The difference
between winning and losing is most often not quitting."
But if you reframe that a little bit, just a little,
it really changes the meaning.
If you don't quit staying up late and sleeping in,
you might not keep that great job that you like going to.
If you don't quit eating dessert at every meal,
you might not succeed at your health goals.
If you don't quit drawing Mickey Mouse, whatever, repeatedly
and try different characters, there'd be no Disney, right?
Sometimes, you have to quit doing something
to do something else.
The point is to do it with intention.
A lot of people, for example, stayed in jobs
that they hated during the pandemic.
Why?
For security, right?
At first, that no-commute life and being CEO
sweatpants-- that was awesome.
Then after a few months, normalized,
and it just became work again.
Quitting can be good, but don't take my word for it.
Let's talk about why millions of people
quit, because we got some data.
According to the Work Institute, out of 100 people,
about a quarter quit for a better job.
Another big chunk quit to gain better well-being
or realign their work-life balance.
But if we combine work-life balance and well-being
into one thing, which I think it should be,
then the number two reason people
quit is to take care of themselves or their families.
And the other reason is to better themselves.
That totally makes sense to me.
You have to quit doing something to refocus.
Sometimes and in some situations,
quitting is actually better than try, trying again.
Why is that?
What power is this?
During a brain surgery where patients were kept awake,
which is pretty common, they were given some cognitive
tests.
The patients, during decision-making tasks,
were releasing dopamine and serotonin
not just as reward chemicals, which
is how we usually think of them, but also
as decision-making chemicals.
It feels good to make decisions.
And though they don't know a lot about what they're doing,
they know that it happened.
Rat studies on decision-making in the brain
found kind of similar results.
They noted it was a complex interplay of brain regions,
and it was hinging on this tiny grouping
of neurons in the prefrontal cortex,
the cortico striatal neurons.
And more research is needed to know what exactly
that dopamine and serotonin do and what
those neurons are doing.
Did making those decisions to quit
make people reduce their stress?
Does it make them feel nice with that dopamine and serotonin?
We can do that research.
And let's change tack a bit, because sometimes when
we don't succeed, we want to try, try again.
But that's not meant to be forever.
Sometimes it's try and then try and then quit.
Imagine you're a fish, and you're swimming
around looking for snackies.
And then all of a sudden, oh no, a hook!
You're hooked!
And sometimes, you're struggling, you're flailing,
and you're flopping around because you're a fish.
You don't have arms, so you're really
flopping around like that.
And then you stop.
Even fish know that they can't flail forever.
They have to quit, even in the face of life and death,
to save energy for a new strategy.
Humans-- we do this too.
Imagine you're at work, and it's stressful,
and things are piling up.
Do you mentally start flailing?
Wah!
I know I do.
So eventually, the flailing stops.
You need a new strategy.
For some people, that strategy might be quitting, not
the whole job, but the path you are on,
the tactics you were using, the process that led you to fail,
quit working with the team that keeps letting you down.
You know, whatever it is, it's not always quitting everything.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes, quitting is good.
Put that in your Gram and post it.
If I hadn't quit track and stepped back,
I might not be an Eagle Scout right now.
If I hadn't quit Seeker, I would never
have started Trace Elements Media.
If I'm not going to quit this job,
then where am I going to find time to do other things?
As Queen Osayi Osar-Emokpae wrote in Impossible
is Stupid, quote, "Quitting is not giving up.
It's choosing to focus your attention
on something more important.
Quitting is not losing confidence.
It's realizing that there are more valuable ways
you can spend your time.
Quitting is not making excuses.
It's learning to be more productive, efficient,
and effective instead.
Quitting is letting go of things or people
that are sucking the life out of you
so that you can do more things that bring you strength."
I quit a thing.
It's not the first time I've quit a thing.
It won't be the last time I quit a thing.
I feel better about this than I felt about anything in a while,
actually.
But I also feel a bit bad because emotions
are complicated.
So maybe there's not a hard science answer
to why I feel better.
Maybe it's less stress.
But if you're interested in learning how studies
are put together, then you should
learn about scientific thinking on Brilliant.
Brilliant is a way to learn something new anytime, like in
between when I release my videos, for example.
They call it enrichment learning.
And on Brilliant, you can solve fascinating and challenging
problems to help you learn about concepts at a deeper,
more satisfying level.
Actively solving problems eventually
becomes this addictive, interactive experience.
For example, I really love to just learn new things before I
release a video on a topic.
So I would go to Brilliant, and I'd
learn about quantum mechanics or field theory
or rocketry so that I have this base layer of knowledge
before I call an expert.
It really helps.
Plus having that basic understanding
of math and science, if you don't already,
is awesome because of all the extra layers of concepts
that it opens up for you to explore.
So if scientific thinking is in your bag,
maybe you've got that down.
They also have paths and statistics
and orbital mechanics, genetics and probability and machine
learning and rocketry and all this other stuff.
Try out Brilliant and support Uno Dos of Trace
at the same time.
To do that, just go a brilliant.org/Trace.
The first 200 people to sign up with my link
we'll get 20% off the annual premium subscription.
It is totally worth it.
And again, it supports the show even if you just try it out.
So make that decision, get up in the dopamine,
some serotonin in you.
And if it's not for you, you know what to do.
OK, but back to the wrap-up.
Maybe it's simply I'm taking some agency over my life.
Maybe I'm trapped in my own cognitive dissonance
and I just can't see this decision clearly
because that actually sounds kind of right.
But whatever it is, quitting is OK.
Quitting is good.
Don't give in to the sunk cost hype.
Don't let your brain's heuristics stop you
from thinking clearly.
Try and try and try and then maybe give it a break.
Quit trying for a minute.
Try something else.
Thank you so much for watching Uno Dos of Trace.
Thank you for your support.
Y'all are the best, especially since I've taken this little
break over the last few months, working on some great videos
with all this new free time that I'm going to have.
I visited a heavy particle accelerator
that smashes uranium into little pieces,
and I just haven't had the energy or the time
to put it into some video that I can make for you.
So I'm working on that now.
Thanks so much for coming to my nerd talk.
I'm Trace.
I'll see you in the future.