📚 Getting the monkey off your back

I don’t know how many books I’ve stuck with and read from start go finish despite knowing I should quit and read something much better…

Luckily for me, our October book Quit is NOT one of them.

We’re just about half way through this one from Annie Duke, and so far it is packing a punch. It’s bringing up quite a few memories of times when I’ve quit something that wasn’t working for me, and other times when I stuck with something I should have quit much earlier.

Quit has been an incredible reminder that some of the world’s most well known success stories only came to be because the person who achieved it was able to quit something else.

By the way, we’ve included some super valuable resources on the topic of quitting from folks like Seth Godin that you’ll hopefully find really valuable. Do check them out!

We are really looking forward to chatting through Quit next week at our end of month book club call! So far it looks like we’ll have a good audience.

We hope to see you there so make sure you register below if you haven’t already!

We are now about halfway through Quit and the message is becoming clearer with every chapter. Successful people are not defined by how long they stick with things, but by how wisely they decide when to stop.

Here are a few concepts that have stood out to us so far:

Once we commit to a decision, our instinct is to prove that it was the right one. Duke calls this the escalation of commitment — the tendency to keep investing in a plan even when evidence suggests it is not working. The more effort or pride we have tied up in a choice, the harder it becomes to step away. By recognising this pattern, we can pause before throwing good energy after bad and give ourselves permission to change course.

Duke encourages us to think in terms of probabilities rather than certainties. Instead of assuming things will work out, we can assess how likely they are to succeed. This kind of thinking helps us separate optimism from evidence. It is not about being negative, but about being realistic and seeing the full range of possible outcomes and adjusting our actions accordingly.

One of the most practical insights in this section is the idea of having someone who helps us know when to walk away. A quitting coach could be a colleague, mentor or friend who provides an outside perspective. They can spot when we are justifying a poor decision or ignoring our own criteria for stopping. Having someone objective keeps us honest and makes it easier to quit with clarity and confidence rather than guilt or regret.

This week, we we want to know who you turn to when you need help deciding whether to walk away from something?

Here are some additional reads, listens and reflections that complement our journey through Quit and expand the ideas of when to persist and when to change direction.

We’re building an incredible community over on our Bad Ass Bookshelf Discord channel where around 120 of you have joined in the fun.

Here’s a little snippet of the conversation going on over there:

We're so excited to host our next Bad Ass Bookshelf bookclub call to discuss Quit at the end of October! Call details below:

Date: Thursday, 30th October
Time: 17:00 GMT (12:00 EST / 09:00 PST)

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