John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century, summed up this phenomenon well when he said, "Worldly wisdom te… - Annie Duke

Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.

The endowment effect is a cognitive bias where we value something we own more than we would if we didn't own it. We can be endowed to objects but also to our own ideas and beliefs. Endowment is an obstacle to quitting because when we irrationally value things we own, we miscalculate their expected value. We might think the company we started or the project we devised or the belief we have is worth more than it actually is. We prefer to stick with the status quo. We are more tolerant of bad outcomes that come from sticking with what we are already doing than bad outcomes that come from switching to something new. This phenomenon is part of omission-commission bias. When you say, "I'm just not ready to decide yet," what you are really saying is, "For now, I am choosing the status quo." Even in highly data-rich environments like professional sports, sunk cost, endowment, and status quo bias distort decision-making.

That's why, if I had to skill somebody up to get them to be a better decision-maker, quitting is the primary skill I would choose, because the option to quit is what allows you to react to that changing landscape.