00:00:00.000Hey, everyone, we're working on a special series for the fall, and we need your help.
00:00:04.680So even though I'm in my 40s, absolutely outside of academia, don't have kids, back to school
00:00:12.100season still just really speaks to me.
00:00:14.480Like it's the time when I think about like, I'm going to go to the cube at the Bon Marche,
00:00:19.980sorry, specific Pacific Northwest reference and shop for cool clothes.
00:00:25.460so we're doing an episode all about back to school style. You don't have to be going back
00:00:31.740to school. You can just like share these feelings with me. So we're going to do one episode on
00:00:36.200personal style. So whether you want to interrogate the notion, whether you want help figuring yours
00:00:41.200out, you can go in any direction here. We're also doing one on viral clothing trends. So if there
00:00:47.460is an object that you're like, how did this suddenly get everywhere? How did this become
00:00:53.020the item. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about how this works. Let's talk about supply chain,
00:00:58.660what's annoying, what's befuddling, all of it. And then we're going to do one with friend of
00:01:02.880the pod, Corinne Faye, who runs Big Undies. Send us your questions about thrifting while plus size,1.00
00:01:09.040shopping for a body that feels like it's always changing, figuring out your queer style,0.66
00:01:13.440how to feel about shorts, whether 10 denim shirts is too many. No, obviously not. And0.94
00:01:19.080anything else that you want to ask Corinne. You can submit all your questions at tinyurl.com
00:01:24.720slash culturestudypod. This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anna Helen Peterson.
00:01:37.900Hi, everyone. I'm Lindsay Krauss. I'm the author of The Case for Quitting,
00:01:41.380which is about the surprising benefits of opting out.
00:01:44.540Tell me about something that you wish you'd quit and didn't.
00:01:49.080Hmm. I mean, I was thinking about that a lot as I was writing this book. It's a difficult question because so much of where we come in our lives has to do with what we stick with. And so you can't actually take it away, right?
00:02:05.880But at the same time, I grew up, I think part of what kind of made me successful as a kid was sticking with things. But I also learned the wrong lesson, I think, from doing that. And that was part of why I wrote this book, that even when I was playing the clarinet as a kid, I was terrible at clarinet and I was bad at it. And I just I stuck with it. And what I didn't realize when I was doing that was all the different things that I was not doing instead that I might have been better at.
00:02:32.120And so I think that as I was writing this book, I thought a lot about those things where I thought
00:02:36.660it was so virtuous and almost like heroic that I was sticking with these things that I hated and
00:02:40.680that I was never even going to be good at anyway. Like there was no point. How about you? Yeah.
00:02:44.280No. And this actually, I think, touches on a fundamental misunderstanding, at least American
00:02:50.480misunderstanding about quitting, that like when you quit something, then you suddenly are like
00:02:57.000doing nothing, right? That like quitting means nothingness instead of quitting opens you up to
00:03:03.680other things. Absolutely. That quitting is a transition. I mean, I've been dealing with that
00:03:08.000right now. Like I technically I'm self-employed, right? I have like my own job. I'm publishing a
00:03:13.060book, promoting a book. And then after that, I actually don't know exactly what's next. I have
00:03:17.160some ideas, but it's been really interesting to me almost as like an act of discipline to go to
00:03:23.480like a party, for example. And I have all these friends that think of me as or people that I don't
00:03:27.780even know that think of me as like, you know, someone who is very goal oriented, someone who
00:03:31.840does care about achievement, someone who does care about success and tell them that I'm not
00:03:37.800really sure what's next, that I'm waiting, that I'm trying to have the discipline to figure that
00:03:43.520out. And I kind of get this impression sometimes that people are thinking like, oh, that's easy
00:03:47.780for you to say or like, oh, that's easy for you to do. Or almost that there might be like a touch
00:03:52.820of judgment in that. And I've, in the past, really wanted, I've been scared of that kind
00:03:59.180of judgment. I've wanted to kind of react and always have something to say. Like, that's how
00:04:03.360I got every job when I was younger, was just taking the first thing that I got just so I had
00:04:07.560something to say. And this has been a total inversion of those tendencies for me in an
00:04:12.740exciting way. I think that for high achievers like you and I, this is such a crucial conversation
00:04:20.900because like part of the reason I went to grad school was so that I could have like an immediate
00:04:26.300thing that I was doing in a pathway that was very legible to me so that like I wouldn't have to worry
00:04:32.960about that liminal space of nothingness and there are some people who feel very comfortable in that
00:04:38.560space and I've been jealous of them for a very long time the same way I think like everyone is
00:04:43.860jealous of people who just have like fundamentally different personalities I'm like must be nice to
00:04:48.900be so chill and not terrified of like not having a job all the time. Yeah. And I've always been
00:04:55.800kind of one of those type A plus people. And I'm really trying in my 40s to unravel that and unpack
00:05:01.260it and dial it back a little bit. Welcome to like so many high achievers I know who are using their
00:05:07.08040s as a way to like rethink these things. So we kind of just worked ourselves into this idea of
00:05:13.300how you got interested in quitting. But I also know you have a story. And even before I read
00:05:20.420the way that you narrativized it in the beginning of the book, I knew pieces of this story. But I
00:05:26.500used to think of you as like, oh my god, this person is so fucking talented. They have this0.92
00:05:34.320incredible job at the New York Times, nominated for an Oscar, then won the Oscar for the short
00:05:39.780film that you made with the New York Times opinion section. And then also above it all,
00:05:45.700and this is important to me, like you started getting faster as a runner in your 30s. There's
00:05:53.420this piece that you wrote that just sticks in my head that is essentially like, I had no idea that
00:05:58.740I could get this fast. Yeah, that was such a meaningful piece to me. Yes. And then things
00:06:05.420changed. So can we talk about that? Sure. So and thank you. I really appreciate that. And I've
00:06:11.480always felt a little bit of conflict there about kind of the persona that you project and sort of
00:06:16.980the truth of your own experience and, you know, whether or not you and also how much of that is
00:06:23.480a perception versus reality. But I think those two things intersect a little bit more than we
00:06:29.160sometimes want to admit to ourselves and to others. And so, yeah, I mean, to back up, a lot
00:06:35.580of my work at The Times explored questions around how to keep going and how to go harder and how to
00:06:41.060do more. And as you said, I was an endurance athlete and also a hopeless striver. So that
00:06:47.480made sense. And I loved that. It accomplished great things, like you said. Especially, I mean,
00:06:52.340it was incredibly rewarding to me that when my reporting on women's sports, which was something
00:06:55.980that I really cared about, but wasn't always kind of at the center of the conversation.
00:07:00.200It really did in some ways help reform the industry. Like when I helped elevate women
00:07:05.980Olympians voices to bring maternity rights to pregnant athletes sponsored by Nike. I mean,
00:07:10.080that was like a watershed moment to me of, oh, this can work like hard work works. And when you
00:07:16.920said like I took some of those interests and was able to commission through my regular job,
00:07:21.140the Times is, I guess, only Academy Award winning film. That was also on women's sports.
00:07:25.980And that to me was, it was almost like the symbiosis of everything I cared about, like that hard work does pay off. But at the same time, a lot of my best work at the times was self-assigned. And I wasn't always, you know, communicating that because in some ways, I think I kind of hoped that that wouldn't be the case at some point.
00:07:45.680Yeah. And that I would be able to marry all of those interests together into a job that felt like authentically and perfectly me. I think that that entrepreneurialism was harder to do at an institution than than I wished. But it was so rewarding when it did work.
00:08:03.440Yeah. But I think as things started to go on, I mean, and it was the pandemic, I was starting to have kids starting to, you know, evolve my life in other ways, as most of us do as we get older in one way or another. I think for me, that approach was starting to feel a little tired. Like I was starting to spin. I was starting to feel stuck. And then worse, as you said, it stopped working.
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00:26:06.840And I think just even understanding that we may be biased towards making decisions that don't actually serve us or even serve the goal that we're trying to achieve is an important thing to understand.
00:26:19.760I just feel like you're just like reading me for filth this entire conversation.
00:26:23.700No, I mean, everything you write, I'm just like, oh, this is my diary.
00:26:28.020So, okay. So why do women specifically have a tough time quitting, do you think? And I know1.00
00:26:34.380you have like a whole chapter about this. Yeah. Basically women are amazing at persevering,
00:26:41.580especially when situations get hard. I mean, I first kind of noticed this for myself. Obviously
00:26:47.200I'm an endurance athlete, but I was watching the Boston Marathon in 2018 when it was horrific
00:26:52.220conditions and realized kind of intuitively. And then the math played out that women finished0.57
00:26:57.840at considerably higher rates than men. And I wrote a whole article for the New York Times about kind
00:27:03.840of why that might be. And there are physical reasons. Women have more body fat than men,
00:27:11.120typically. There are a lot of psychological reasons that are really interesting. Women
00:27:15.700are better at withstanding pain. And also, interestingly, women are less likely to take0.97
00:27:22.160risks, particularly in stressful situations. And I'd love to kind of hear your thoughts on that.
00:27:27.840But then finally, women just from a kind of sociological perspective, women, when things are hard, they turn to each other and kind of bring each other along.
00:27:38.300And men kind of go internally and kind of rely on ego and themselves to get through.
00:27:44.540And so the outcome is that women are just very, very good at pushing through.
00:27:48.320And that article was super interesting to me.
00:27:50.580And it really made me feel like this was a superpower.
00:27:53.500But I think as a lot of women start to realize that superpower has limits and in a world and in our culture that really prizes perseverance, I think that that very perseverance can start to work against us.
00:28:06.060well even that idea right that like in stressful situations that we don't take risks like the risk
00:28:13.520in this scenario is quitting right like that is the risk it's like i trained all this time to do
00:28:19.640the boston marathon and quitting would be like in a blow in some way right yeah but i think about
00:28:26.240like quitting in much like quitting a marriage quitting a job like there's just so much more0.67
00:28:33.380precarity involved in women's lives and so if you're stressed out like instead of being able
00:28:38.940to look at a situation and understand why you should quit why you should have quit long ago
00:28:44.240the impulse or like whether this is you know deeply ingrained like very contemporary cultural
00:28:51.720whatever it is the impulse is not to and to celebrate that ability to stick with it yeah
00:28:58.920Yeah, absolutely. And I think that when I started to realize like in my own life and also in conversations with a lot of other women, you know, especially women in our 40s, millennial women who have kind of been trained to believe that hard work will pay off.
00:29:13.900I think we can sometimes misinterpret our ability to continue like this kind of superpower, this feeling that we can keep going and kind of take that to mean that we should and and then not question some of the circumstances, you know, that just because we can push through them, we might be better off rejecting them instead or at least questioning them.
00:29:34.720And I think we're not inclined to do that all the time. I mean, as I started to dig into the research, I found it really interesting.
00:29:40.920I mean, you just mentioned work. But women, we tend to stick with what we start. I think the Boston Marathon is a great example of that, or marathons in general. That means that statistically, we're more likely to remain in shrinking industries and lower paying jobs compared to men.1.00
00:29:56.860And I think, you know, on a day to day basis, that can seem great. Like we're pushing through, we're sticking. But if you leave or even if you just signal that you're willing to leave, you're probably going to get rewarded for that, whether it's in higher pay or maybe even higher approval ratings at your own job.
00:30:15.780And I think that's where kind of this looking at quitting as an act of boldness, I think, does reward men a little bit more than it tends to reward women.
00:30:25.300And it's also really interesting. There's Richard Reeves. He's a scholar who I'm sure a lot of your viewers know. He had this really great analogy that stood out to me around flowers.
00:30:37.980And he says that men are like orchids and that they're actually a little bit more delicate and a little bit more fragile than we might realize.
00:30:46.360And that that women are like dandelions. I think he's using boys, boys and girls, but like dandelions, girls are dandelions. And in any environment, they can make it work. And on the one hand, that's great. Like, I think women are it's wonderful that women are a lot tougher than I think we culturally get credit for. But it just started to hit me that what is the point of being a dandelion if you're just going to get trampled on?
00:31:11.940that's the second part of the analogy and i love like reeves is using this in the context of like
00:31:18.180we should give men like boys like more credit like we should be more gentle with them right
00:31:24.120instead of like men maybe should also be a little bit more like dandelions and women should be a
00:31:29.320little bit more like orchids absolutely the other thing that you describing like
00:31:33.960women staying in dying industries or in bad jobs, low paying jobs, that this makes me think of is0.86
00:31:42.060oftentimes I hear people talk about why they don't want to quit. And it's that they'll let1.00
00:31:45.980other people down or they would make other people feel bad. And the way that the gospel of like,
00:31:55.460you should protect everyone else's feelings except your own, I think really fits into this
00:32:00.680like way that we've become allergic to quitting because it's like, well, I can handle it.
00:32:24.740Yeah. Yeah. And again, you push through, like you don't take the sick day.
00:32:27.880You put other people before yourself. And what I started to realize is that to go back to this marathon analogy, which was really it really clarified a lot of things for me. But in the marathon, there's a finish line. You know, you either you finish it and it's over. But in life, you can grind forever. It's never going to end unless you end it.
00:32:50.660And that can either mean changing the way that you work or stopping an action that is actually draining you more than it's giving you something back.0.90
00:32:59.980But again, I think that I think you're totally right that women often don't situate themselves in the in that cost benefit analysis of should I stay or should I go until the costs just add up and they're the ones paying.0.97
00:33:13.640Right. And there's no way. Like the analogy that I used to always use for burnout is like you hit the wall and then you scale the wall and then you keep going. And I think that oftentimes instead of like standing back and being like, do I want to scale this wall? Like women wait until they hit the wall and they hit it so hard that the wall falls on them. You know what I mean? Like that's the only way that they stop. It's the only way that they quit.0.95
00:33:38.180Absolutely. And I think like, you know, women are really good at moderating, you know, like when things are hard, like we will downshift, but it's actually not going to necessarily get us what we want either.
00:33:49.940Like sometimes it's actually just cutting out a body of work so that you can focus and really prioritize the areas of your life that do warrant emphasis.
00:33:58.720I mean, it also occurred to me as I was writing this book, I was like, a man, if you think about leisure, a man who is spending his Saturdays resting and restoring and recharging himself for work, he doesn't think of that as quitting.
00:34:13.480But I think a woman often does. And that made me wonder, like, should women start to learn a little bit more about quitting from men?
00:34:23.580I mean, at the same time, this would obviously be a lot more possible if men also learned a little bit more about perseverance from women.
00:34:29.500I mean, especially while someone is cleaning up in the other room.
00:34:34.980But I think I think women really pride ourselves on our ability to continue and don't realize, again, like as you were saying, that the wall is falling down on us and then it's too late.
00:34:49.100OK, so next question comes from Megan, and I love this one.
00:34:53.920Why is it easy for me to quit certain things and impossible to quit others?
00:34:57.280I quit drinking in 2020 after going from college binge drinking to very occasional social drinking and quit coffee in 2022 when it was giving me a racing heart.
00:35:07.500Neither of those decisions were difficult for me, despite a family history of alcoholism, and I've never truly craved alcohol or coffee since formally deciding I had quit.
00:35:16.280I also have no qualms about leaving a social event the second I'm too tired or overwhelmed.
00:35:21.020But in my decades of working, I've rarely quit a job myself and never as soon as I should have.
00:35:25.940If I hadn't been laid off from my $12 an hour bookstore manager job, I think I would still be there.
00:35:31.580My previous HR job had a shitty head boss and a revolving door of employees, but I would still be there if my co-worker hadn't found another really good job for me to apply for.
00:35:40.680Why does my ease in quitting certain things not translate into the workplace?
00:35:45.060I have some thoughts on this, but I want to hear your reaction first.
00:35:49.020Sure. Well, I mean, this is a terrific question.
00:35:51.320And first of all, I want to congratulate you for your ability to quit vices, which are pretty objectively harmful.
00:35:58.900Not everybody is able to do that and I'm sure would really envy your ability to do that.
00:36:05.820But I think what might be happening here is that it might be a matter of judgment.
00:36:11.820So if you think about it, quitting alcohol doesn't require as much of a decision because most of us already know that it's a vice.
00:36:20.100Right. Like people think like, oh, well, yeah, of course, like it's it's a net positive to stop drinking something that sometimes like that we have studies that show that it's not good for your body in some way.
00:36:32.680Yeah. Everybody is telling us to quit alcohol, especially now. Right. Everybody is telling us to quit caffeine in some ways. Right. Like you don't really I mean, of course, you you do need to decide to do that. And again, I applaud somebody who is able to have that self-awareness and actually execute on quitting those things.
00:36:51.660It's it's not as easy for everybody. But again, everybody knows that we probably should at least moderate or reduce our drinking.
00:37:01.420And also, again, here's where judgment comes in, because I think few people that care about us would judge us for quitting drinking, for example, or even coffee.
00:37:10.180Right. Like it's very it would be very gauche to be like, oh, my gosh.
00:37:14.020Yeah. Like then it's a bad friend if they're like, no, no, do the shot with me. Like that's that's not what we're looking for here.
00:37:19.720But I think the difference between what you're talking about, you know, as the second part of the parallel that you're drawing is that quitting things that we've been told are virtuous, like a job, for example, and are by many popular values, good and responsible things to have.
00:37:34.420I mean, this is what my book was about.
00:37:35.480It was about quitting things that we think we should be doing and that we might be judged for.
00:37:41.640Like these are also things where people may be relying on us.
00:37:44.620And this is where we can always procrastinate that decision to quit, because they're not objectively bad things. These things are harder to quit, I think, because we don't even know if we should. And so here I found observations by the decision making expert Annie Duke to be helpful. And she says that quitting on time usually feels like quitting too early in the moment. And so that makes it easy to procrastinate.
00:38:09.520And I think you should also think about the reasons why we stay in things that we start that we do think are good. That's why we start them. Obviously, alcohol would not be part of this. But like the sunk cost fallacy makes it get harder to lose all the time that we've already invested in something. And ironically, the longer we stay in it like a job, it only gets harder to leave.
00:38:31.700And then, of course, there's the uncertainty of what we might get if we do leave. That looms larger in our minds than the comfort of staying in the scenario that we already know, even if it's one where we're not thriving. And so it takes almost a different kind of discipline to stay. And I think that that discipline can convince ourselves that, you know, we're doing the hard thing, that we're doing the good thing, when actually the harder thing would be to make that decision to leave, especially if the thing that we're grinding through and trying to stay at is one where we're not thriving.
00:39:00.800And I mean, I think the good news is that these things are biases. They're lies that our brains tell ourselves. They're not fundamental truths. And studies show that people who do overcome these biases and do quit are happy with the decision to do so in the end. But I think understanding that, that, you know, we think that the hard work that we're putting into staying means that it's that we're doing the right thing. That's that's not true.
00:39:26.300i think i this all like is a much more textured understanding than what my initial response or
00:39:33.540thought was which is that things like quitting alcohol quitting um coffee quitting a social
00:39:40.940situation like they don't have these overarching like effects or responsibility like they don't
00:39:47.600there's not responsibilities to others they're not as enmeshed they don't involve pleasing others
00:39:52.460and the job though like you have to have that really uncomfortable conversation with someone
00:39:59.180to quit a job like there are things where you are it's much more in like you will be disappointing
00:40:05.360someone in some way yeah it's the judgment issue you fear that you're going to be disappointing
00:40:10.380someone in some way yes so like the way that you framed it as judgment i'm like oh she she's scared
00:40:16.300of other people's reactions. She's very confident in herself. Yeah. I think we even sometimes
00:40:23.340outsource that judgment to other people. We overweight it in our minds to think about
00:40:27.560protecting ourselves from the judgment that we might make of ourselves. And again, it just comes
00:40:34.160down to judgment. Very few people, at least the people that matter, are not going to criticize
00:40:38.340you or judge you for quitting vices, but for something like a job or for something, as you
00:40:43.040said that people are relying on you, something that seems responsible, something that seems
00:40:46.480like a good thing to have. Those are the harder things to quit because you're technically supposed
00:40:52.340to keep doing them. And you're worried other people are going to judge you and also yourself.
00:40:57.360Also, what if you regret it? You don't know. Well, and also interesting that when someone
00:41:02.960else found another good job for her, she took it because that's transitioning from one job to
00:41:08.720another, which also does not have the balance of quitting, right? It's like, oh, I found something
00:41:14.260else when in fact, it is quitting. You are leaving this job. But there's something that we have come
00:41:19.340to understand. It's like, if you have something else lined up, then that's okay. Absolutely.
00:41:25.100Yeah. But I also think that's a smart quitting strategy. So she shouldn't really shame herself
00:41:30.660for doing that. No, I don't think she should shame herself. This is more just like, and I think
00:41:34.760she probably asked this question with this intention of like self discernment like what
00:41:39.620what's going on in my head that makes me feel this way yeah the other way of thinking about
00:41:44.040that also is is um you just made me think of the idea of risk right like there's very little risk
00:41:49.560involved in quitting alcohol or coffee there may be discomfort um there may be other challenges
00:41:55.680that go along with it but it's not a risk whereas swapping something for nothing is a huge risk and
00:42:01.780that is what our brains want to protect ourselves from at all costs absolutely understandably so
00:42:06.740next question is about work you have a whole chapter about identity this idea of like yeah
00:42:13.760what do you do when you're quitting something that's your identity and this comes from marianne
00:42:18.200i'm a professional muay thai fighter have been training for over 12 years and often think about
00:42:23.480what happens when i eventually quit it's very enmeshed with my social media account and i
00:42:28.920wonder about the public access people would have to my retirement how to navigate that and how i
00:42:34.480would pivot my account to more quote-unquote normal aspects of my life there's also a high
00:42:40.480risk of depression slash suicidality that comes with quitting high-stakes sports especially when
00:42:46.440they are inextricably linked to who you are as a whole how does one survive quitting in these0.99
00:42:51.780circumstances i just i love this question also like that's fucking sick to be a professional0.98
00:42:57.700Muay Thai fighter. And I want to follow you on social media. Please send the link so that other0.90
00:43:02.360people can follow as well. There's two parts of this question that I see. One is the social media
00:43:08.280aspect and one is the less exterior performance and more like the interior self-conception. And
00:43:15.800like I said, you have a whole chapter that's specifically about this. So where does this
00:43:19.240take you? Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think we talked about this a little bit with the
00:43:23.660previous question, that interplay between fear of judgment from others and also, you know,
00:43:28.740the challenges that we might deal with ourselves when we go through a transition like this. And
00:43:32.720I also want to congratulate Marianne on thinking about these decisions, hopefully before she is
00:43:38.560forced to confront them, because it will only be more painful then. And I think being kind of aware
00:43:43.880of my old colleague, Pete Wells, the former food critic at the New York Times, as he was leaving
00:43:50.420his post he called the job a rented tux meaning that it's something that we're lucky to have
00:43:57.120and it can be beautiful attractive prestigious fancy but it's important to remember that all
00:44:03.260of these things that we do no matter how impressive they are how great they look they're not ours
00:44:07.020um we're renting them you know and also even if like our talent is part of why we were able to
00:44:12.780get a hold of get access to it it's not ours it's going to go away eventually and i think there's
00:44:19.020also something there's something that has always stuck with me you know athletes talk about this a
00:44:23.160lot but it's this idea that athletes die twice and it sounds morose but um so they die the first
00:44:30.580time obviously which is what Marianne is talking about so when our bodies call the end of our
00:44:35.860athletic career and then of course the second time when we actually die and it's inevitable
00:44:41.740if you think about it in terms of retirement as terms of like a first death I think for a lot of
00:44:46.280people, that actually helps give the gravity that these kinds of transitions actually carry with
00:44:51.980them and helps us understand why we feel so conflicted. And in the book, I mean, this is an
00:44:57.820amazing memoir, but the tennis legend Andre Agassi talks about this ambivalence in his memoir
00:45:03.000when he described grappling with the end of his athletic career before his last U.S. Open.
00:45:09.160And he was looking in the mirror and he was saying, like, he was saying, please let this be over.
00:45:14.400But also, I'm not ready for it to be over. And in the memoir, he's just saying that again and again and again. And that's always really stuck with me. Like, when you know you need to leave or you need to stop or you just know that it's time, you're also not ready. I mean, we're rarely ready. Who's ready to die? Nobody. But we have to.
00:45:31.880And so even when it's time, we don't like to change who we are.
00:45:36.220And obviously, this is especially true when, as Marianna said about her social media persona, when we've created a public persona around whatever we do.
00:45:45.780And obviously, there's a psychological term for this.
00:45:49.180Psychologists call that stuck feeling we experience after giving up something that's core to how we view ourselves.
00:45:56.720And I think that's a really perfect way of putting it.
00:45:59.560This idea that we feel like we can't move anymore, that we don't even know what to do.
00:46:04.320And it's not just athletes that feel this.
00:46:06.160I mean, even incarcerated people who long dreamed of, understandably, getting out of prison, they also describe the process of readjusting to their new lives as sometimes excruciatingly difficult.
00:46:17.960So even if you're transitioning to something that's probably objectively better, it's still really difficult.
00:46:25.280And so all of these people, all of these athletes, all these people going through a transition, they all have to ask this question, which is like, who are we now?
00:46:35.080And again, when your sense of identity is tied to a public persona, it's even harder because you're expected to have an answer to that question, even as you're searching for it yourself.
00:46:43.740Yeah. And so I think there it's important to remember that the judgment that we fear facing for stopping and for changing, you know, for growing, I guess, in other words, it's often overblown in our minds.
00:46:57.760And I really love talking to this Cornell psychologist named Tom Gilovich, who talks about something called the spotlight effect, where it's really easy for us to imagine that we're under a spotlight where everyone around us is watching us and judging us. And that's often not true at all. It's another bias.
00:47:15.740Yes. Yeah. I mean, especially for the and I think what's important here to remember is that that's especially not true for the people who really know us.
00:47:23.920Yeah. These people and these are the people that we're going to have to talk about this, you know, like 24 hours a day, if you're me and my poor husband.
00:47:32.380But these people, they care about us for a lot more data points than we're inclined to believe.
00:47:37.360And, of course, in the in the case of social media, that that's a little different.
00:47:41.840Like you're putting the spotlight on yourself and those people are following you and they don't have as many data points and you may lose some followers like they're following you for that one side of yourself.
00:47:51.120But that's another reason not to align our identities with those that we project on social media.
00:47:55.900The people that watch us are not the same as the people who care about us and we need to live for them, like the people that care about us and also for ourselves.
00:48:04.080So that that to me helps a lot. But what do you think, Anne?
00:48:08.100yeah no i think that like there is this real desire and i see this on social media to really
00:48:15.220narrativize shifts in life right so like make kind of like a neat pivot uh in whatever your
00:48:24.360life is doing and to somehow explain that in a way that makes sense to people but it doesn't
00:48:30.620have to be that way like you can just totally change uh and i respect more of the like we'll
00:48:38.620see what's next like who knows like that you know kind of what you're doing trying to figure out
00:48:43.260you can also say nothing at all like as i was going through a lot of this stuff i just stopped
00:48:47.380posting because i was like i don't want to communicate this to other people i just want
00:48:51.680to think um and i think we shouldn't underestimate that the the true fact that our followers and the
00:48:59.520people that are kind of like literally following us. They're giving us very little. They're
00:49:03.080following us. We don't owe them anything. We might get a lot from that sort of parasocial
00:49:12.300relationship. Like I know I do. I love Instagram for that reason. And I love both putting out
00:49:17.180content when I want to and also consuming other people's content. Like it's really helped me as
00:49:22.640like a galvanizer in the past. But when we don't want to do it, we don't have to. And I think people
00:49:26.300forget that. The thing that I was also thinking about with someone like Marianne is it might be
00:49:32.100useful as well to just think about like your social media account, at least as it is now,
00:49:37.240what many people are following is an image of you, right? Like a celebrity image, a star image,
00:49:42.780a sports image. And when that is no longer part of like what you're posting about,
00:49:50.940you know if some people stop following it it doesn't mean that they don't like you it means
00:49:57.620that what they were invested in was the sports component it's not like a judgment on you and so
00:50:02.980to kind of distance you like the living breathing loving person from that image is useful and i know
00:50:10.120a lot of stars like that's why they feel like if they post on social media like someone else is
00:50:15.520posting for them and they don't look at the likes right they don't look at any of that feedback
00:50:19.420because yes, they understand it as part of like their role as a public persona. But as people
00:50:27.080love to say, like, maybe what other people think of you on social media is none of your business.
00:50:31.680Right? Like, yeah, absolutely. The other thing that I would just say is like, when I quit academia,
00:50:38.900the process was long. The process of shifting my identity. It wasn't just like, oh, I'm no longer
00:50:44.700and academic like there were many months when I was still like I was so integrated into that
00:50:54.720community still so like in mourning still really unsure of like do I call myself doctor still like
00:51:03.040what is how do I how do I want to keep what do I want to keep what do I want to leave
00:51:08.180yep and it really took many years to figure that out and just to give yourself a lot of grace as
00:51:14.660you as you do decide that yeah and I think one way one practical way to give yourself grace during
00:51:21.400that time is I mean it can be a cliche but I have to tell myself this all the time and I think it's
00:51:27.380important to remember it's that who we are is more than what we do and that when we define ourselves
00:51:34.080in terms of who we are instead of what we do it makes leaving what we're doing much easier
00:51:39.160yeah because while what we're doing is changing who we are is always going to be there I mean
00:51:44.820honestly whether we like it or not like that's the flip side of quitting is that sometimes people
00:51:48.700use quitting as a way to like because they expect that they're going to become a completely new
00:51:53.300person and shocking everywhere like everywhere you go there you are there you are yeah exactly
00:51:59.140but again those qualities that made it hard to leave what you're leaving like in the case of
00:52:04.880Being an athlete, obviously, it's hard work, it's drive, it's diligence, it's discipline.
00:52:09.620Those qualities are going to apply to whatever you do next.
00:52:13.660Like the puzzle pieces, it may take a while as you, I mean, and this is exactly what happened for you.
00:52:17.340Like you left academia, but everything you write is grounded in this sense of scholarship that I think really sets you apart as a journalist.
00:52:25.460Like you didn't actually throw all of that away, whether or not you wanted to, because what we do is changing, but we are not.
00:52:34.880typically I mean again sometimes we want to but that's a lot harder so I think that's important
00:52:39.940that can be kind of a sense of comfort in during these transitions absolutely like it's still there
00:52:45.300even though you know this when we talked about at the beginning like is there something that
00:52:48.660you wish you would have quit sometimes I think about that other route especially in my case
00:52:54.520because of like the mountains of student debt yes I just calculated so I am like 700 away from
00:53:02.580paying off the last of my loans like I'm so freaking close and I could just do it but I
00:53:07.420just wanted to do it like the natural cycle just to like feel that that like the actual draw just
00:53:14.880happened like the last withdraw from my account but then the other day I went through and I
00:53:19.200calculated like how much I actually spent if you add in all the interest not just like the
00:53:24.600what I actually took out but the you know the interest on top of that and it was just like
00:53:30.320it's the sort of thing that makes me think like look back and think like what why didn't I quit
00:53:36.260what made me persevere like what are all these things that made me feel like this was the only
00:53:41.060way forward I know some of it was sunk cost fallacy for sure but part of it was that like
00:53:45.640within the bounds of what I was doing I felt like I was succeeding or people I think people who stay
00:53:51.480in jobs that underpay them for a really long time or stay in relationships and they feel this like
00:53:56.260just this feeling this lingering regret that almost sours the past and I I want to like
00:54:03.220we made those decisions because yeah or no yeah after they leave they're like why didn't I do
00:54:08.240this earlier yeah like what I feel so angry at my past self and there are always reasons we're
00:54:15.380trying to we're trying to have our best judgment and we just like have to forgive our past selves
00:54:20.180sometimes oh absolutely but i think that's also a really important thing to remember when you
00:54:26.580are thinking about quitting is that the longer like this this really stuck with me in a convincing
00:54:32.460way as i was reporting this book is that it does not get easier to quit no and so you just lose
00:54:38.840time and so you're and you're you're going to look back and regret having stayed if you know
00:54:45.320you need to leave again if you instinctively know this which you probably do then it's only going to
00:54:51.560get harder with time and you're only going to regret staying longer more so sometimes it's
00:54:56.140better to just cut the cord and go the culture study podcast is sponsored by tumble so you know
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00:55:40.160in the past if they peed on a rug i'd be like you know on my hands and knees with the urine
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00:58:37.640obsession okay this next question is about who can afford to quit and i wanted to to put these
00:58:50.280two questions together because one's much more about like the great resignation and one is more
00:58:54.520about like larger questions of like societal and economic privilege but they seem to be very much
00:59:01.000conversation with one another. So the first one comes from Chris. I feel like there was a magical
00:59:05.880moment during COVID and the Great Resignation where it seemed like workers had a lot of power
00:59:10.720and it was easy to quit and find jobs or whatever one wanted. But now with the AI layoffs, the
00:59:16.300pendulum has swung the other way and any impetus that I have to quit or take a career break is
00:59:21.520tempered by the side of dozens of friends who have been unemployed for months. Do you foresee
00:59:26.500any future where we get back to a more balanced dynamic between employers and employees?
00:59:31.720And how might we recognize that moment when it arrives? And if jobs stay scarce,
00:59:35.920how do we adapt that reality? And the second is from Juliana.
00:59:40.580How does quitting intersect with privilege? I spent several years and six figures in student
00:59:45.800loans when I was in my mid-20s to get a master's in occupational therapy. I didn't love the program,
00:59:51.600but the idea of quitting didn't seem like an option, which is a whole other line of
00:59:56.160questioning. I finished the program, got a job, and continued to feel unhappy. I started temping,
01:00:03.180picked up a weekend hospital shift, and started a new career hunt. But I did all this knowing I
01:00:08.660could fall back on my family if things got tight financially. Ten years on, the quit and pivot was
01:00:15.220the best thing I've done, but I often wonder if I could have or would have taken that risk without
01:00:20.800my familial safety net. How do you all think about this issue?
01:00:25.480All right. So where do you start with these?
01:00:28.320So I'm not a labor expert, but of course, capitalism...
01:00:34.600You're not an economist. You're not the president of the Fed.
01:00:37.100The first question I'm going to kind of speak to in the bigger picture, it's hard for me to
01:00:42.920forecast where the labor market is going. And also kind of the difference between the perception of
01:00:48.180agency that workers have versus the reality, I think, is is always a little different.
01:00:53.760Yeah. And there's been a lot of pieces kind of debunking the perception that a lot of people
01:01:00.540had around like worker rebellion and the in the great resignation that I think is I think is
01:01:05.820valid. And so much of this is about feeling right and is about perception. So, again, perception
01:01:10.880shapes reality. So I'm not a labor expert, but of course, capitalism is a big reason why
01:01:17.940many of us are scared to quit. I didn't talk a lot about structural issues in the book because
01:01:22.940I felt like that was a whole different book that many people have written a lot better.
01:01:27.600And in this case, I decided to write a lot about, you know, the personal agency, like the personal
01:01:32.800ability that we have to drive decisions in our lives. And that's because no matter who we are
01:01:41.480and what we do, we do have choices. And if we say that we don't, we are giving up a lot.
01:01:46.940We are making those choices every day. Every time we don't quit, we are deciding to stay no matter who you are. And you may have a very good reason. And I think it's important to be really honest with yourself about those reasons.
01:02:00.620capitalism can be one of those reasons like maybe you don't have a lot of job options and you need
01:02:06.420to support yourself and then maybe you should stay but I think you need to frame that as a
01:02:11.500choice to yourself not as not as this kind of like passive I don't I can't do anything else
01:02:17.520like don't have any choices yeah yeah it's incredibly empowering to be employed if you
01:02:21.820need a job like you should be proud of yourself for doing that but you should also think about
01:02:26.740how that job like the role that that job is serving in your life and i think this is where
01:02:30.840a lot of millennials i mean and you've written about this so much um uh a lot of millennials
01:02:36.500have kind of had a misplaced sense of where work should fit into their lives like when we obviously
01:02:41.480merge it with like our passion our purpose and our income um that that's i think when a lot of
01:02:48.060people start to to go wrong um or at least start to become incredibly dissatisfied um
01:02:54.240your work should exist to support your life your life should not exist to support your work
01:02:59.740and I think a lot of millennials don't understand this and if we can just be honest with ourselves
01:03:04.080about the role of work in our lives we'll wind up making better choices and probably be happier too
01:03:09.920I think what I've seen as millennials have aged into the beginning of middle-agedness
01:03:16.160is that a lot of the conversations about being trapped in a job or being scared to quit or
01:03:22.660feeling like if I have to like scared to be jobless for a while specifically with people who
01:03:30.440have a partner what it means is not that they're going to be destitute it means that they might
01:03:36.780have class slippage and I think what we are taught to think about is that like they're like class
01:03:43.900slippage is worse than death right and this is true of people who don't want to leave a relationship
01:03:48.360and part of it might be if they have children but a part of it is like i don't want to leave
01:03:53.920the two income lifestyle yeah or i don't want like our total our overall income to change
01:04:00.200and i absolutely understand that i went through like this happened in my family when i was growing
01:04:06.200up and it's like it sucked that class slippage was really difficult but at the same time it was fine
01:04:12.880ultimately but then when i look at like around me at my peers and i see like the real reticence is
01:04:19.880like i don't want to change my lifestyle though but also my lifestyle is kind of miserable because
01:04:24.380of this job right yeah so it's it's a catch-22 and i think it's really hard to to look at it
01:04:30.960like to do you know a sort of like pros and cons list the way that we used to if like we're trying
01:04:36.560to figure out who to go on a date with or something or which college to go to like yeah it's very
01:04:40.980difficult to weigh those things against one another. Yeah. And it's really hard to weigh
01:04:45.260something or at least to privilege something over nothing. If you're thinking about just quitting
01:04:51.060without another job, for example, and have truly no idea about what you might want to do next. I
01:04:56.380mean, the freedom that comes with quitting is one thing and that can be really great. Like I
01:05:02.100am very happy right now feeling kind of like unencumbered and loving this idea of like
01:05:08.740possibility. But it's important to remember that quitting does not give you direction. It doesn't
01:05:13.580tell you what to do next. And I think that can be really scary, especially when income and class,
01:05:18.320as you said, are tied up in those decisions. Like you don't know what's going to happen next,
01:05:22.140but you also know that you're reliant on parts of what you have right now. But again, I think
01:05:27.380that comes down to this idea of choice. Like that can be incredibly empowering to say, no,
01:05:33.980I'm actually making this decision right now because many people that can afford to leave
01:05:38.220don't do it. And I think that, I mean, that kind of gets into the privilege question, I guess,
01:05:44.140which I think about all the time. There's this story from your book that has stuck with me
01:05:49.440where you talk about this famous story of this coach in Texas who like essentially just put his0.99
01:05:55.420players through the fucking ringer. Like they just had to like do these incredible workouts,0.98
01:05:59.680it's like people were fainting all the time but the reason you knew that he was great was because
01:06:05.620he wasn't training his players to be good football players and he wasn't selecting them just to be
01:06:10.460good football players he was selecting them for their like tenacity at life yeah and the proof
01:06:15.760was the proof was that many of these people grew up to be millionaires yeah the willingness to
01:06:22.720suffer right and i'm like okay the the way that we judge like the success of these people and this is
01:06:29.520very just like how we think in america is that they make a lot of money yeah and there's no like
01:06:35.320what if these people are miserable right like what if this guy who like suffered like what if
01:06:42.640he has a horrible marriage because he's never gonna quit it right yeah yeah what if he's a
01:06:47.180horrible boss because he doesn't think like he doesn't have empathy for how other people feel
01:06:51.700on the job and i just like that understanding that like somehow if you could suffer then you'll make
01:06:58.400a lot of money just yeah then you're inattentive yeah is inattentive to these larger questions of
01:07:04.620like our our purpose of life right absolutely yeah um just completely the idea of quitting
01:07:13.520as antithetical to success is I mean that is one thing that in reporting this book I
01:07:21.280became convinced is just absolutely not true. And I before would have truly thought that. I mean,
01:07:29.780I've put up with so many things in my life and been so proud of my willingness to, like, die
01:07:35.460trying. And that's actually, I mean, I think it's great to be able to do that, but it is not a
01:07:44.420command to do it. And oftentimes leaving in favor of something better is by far the smarter decision.
01:07:51.280And the harder decision, like, which I think, so I think the idea that staying is the hardest thing, like, that's just absolutely not true.
01:08:00.260So I want to end on this question about kids, because this is something I see a ton of, like, just this internal debate about should we force the kids to do it versus should we not force the kids to do it?
01:08:11.320And, like, kids are soft these days, which has been a discourse for a really long time.
01:08:15.500And especially since you have young kids, I think it's pretty interesting.