#594 Annie Duke On Quitting & Bobby & Eddie Luckiest Moments in Music History

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey, guys. Bobby Bowens here. We're at the table for this Bobby cast. We're going to talk about musicians, even actors, that were discovered by, as the internet says, pure luck. Now I'm not a big luck guy, but these are what I think the internet says are the luckiest discoveries in music and acting. And then after this, we're going to talk with a doctor, Dr. Annie Duke, about luck and about quitting. All right, number one, Elvis Presley and Sun Records, 1953. Have you heard of the gift recording? No. So Elvis, 18 years old, walks into Sun Studio in Memphis to record a couple songs. He paid $4 to cut two songs. My happiness, and that's when your heart begins. He paid that money so he could record what he said was a gift to his mom. The session was ran by Maryon Kijsger, who is Sam Phillips' assistant. She saw him, thought it was super interesting, went and told Sam Phillips about Elvis. Sam Phillips was looking for a white singer who could convincingly sing with black musical phrasing and feel, a blues R&B style. And Sam Phillips then knew of Elvis Presley. Something happened months past, and then Sam Phillips called Elvis back because he needed someone to come in and sing, all from that record he was paying $4 for for his mom so he could do a gift session. That is crazy. I didn't know that that's how it started. I always pictured Elvis going in the sun and being like, I'm Elvis Presley. I'd like to sing for you, Mr. Phillips. Yeah, he called him back to try sessions with guitarist Scotty Moore and the bassist Bill Black. The early takes, they say, were stiff, nothing clicked. During a break, Elvis started fooling around with an Arthur Crudup blues tune, which is that's all right. And so they sped it up, gave it kind of a country bounce. And then in 1954, the first single, that's all right, with Blue Moon of Kentucky on the B side. God, it's amazing. A local DJ played it reportedly on Memphis Radio, listeners flooded the station with calls, and there you go. All of that because Elvis was in to record a birthday gift for his mom. Okay, and you think that's luck? I don't believe in luck. You think that's fate? No. I think, and I think what we'll talk about in a minute, when I have Annie on, I think anything lucky happens because of decisions you made leading up to that. It doesn't matter what it is. I think it's all decision-based. I think there are random occurrences, but I don't believe in defining luck at all. But I think if you're looking at how people define extreme luck and people just being discovered, this is one of them that makes the list. Yeah. Man, that's pretty lucky. That's so lucky that he just went in there for a gift. And then the fact that his assistant was like, I always think that that's amazing, that somebody makes such an impression on someone that they're going to tell someone else about it. It's probably their job though, too, if they're working in there. Like he says, hey, if somebody really good comes in, let me know. Okay, I didn't think about that. And then also he waited months. So who knows how many other people he called, and it just didn't work out. Right. Okay, that's number one on the list. At number two, October 17th, 1961, the Rolling Stones on a random train station, and there's a reunion, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, they randomly run into each other after years apart. Now what happens is, Keith notices Mick because he's holding a blues record. It was an imported American blues record with Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry. Those records were extremely rare in England at the time. And so they had known each other a little bit, but because, you're talking about childhood acquaintances, but because they were holding the record, they started talking about music. They started playing music. They then became a band. And so one random train platform interaction holding a record that made them want to talk about that kind of music ended up creating the Rolling Stones. I love that. I mean, five minutes earlier, five minutes later, different train. Hey, what if somebody else was holding the record of Chuck Berry? No record at all. Yeah, no record, then they wouldn't have stopped and talked. Or they wouldn't have talked about music for sure. And we probably wouldn't have the Rolling Stones. Yeah, so if there was no record, they may have said, hey, Keith. Good to see you again. Hi, Mick. Remember when we used to have crumpets? I remember that, right? And there would have been no talk of music, but because they both had a love for American Blues, you have the Rolling Stones to get in together. I love that. Luck? Yes, yes, absolutely. Justin Bieber. Oh, what's this? It can't be the YouTube video, right? It's absolutely the YouTube video. So it's the accidental YouTube click that changed pop music. I mean, if I were ranking modern luck stories with finger quotes, I think this is probably one of my favorites. Bieber's 12 to 13 years old in Stratford, Ontario. He enters a local singing competition, doesn't win, finishes second. His mom uploads a performance video to YouTube so friends and family can watch. It wasn't, hey, everyone discover my kid. YouTube really wasn't massive like it is now, and it wasn't being used for artist discovery then. There was no strategy, except, hey, everybody that knows us, you can go to this link and watch Justin sing. Wow. Scooter Braun was searching YouTube for a different artist. He clicked on Bieber's video by mistake. So there was nothing there except he typed in something, Bieber's video came up, he hit it, and then watched it. It wasn't a label submission. It wasn't a meeting or referral, and Scooter Braun had been like a promoter. It wasn't like Scooter Braun was this massive, you know, talent manager at the time either. And so he tracked him down through, according to the story, which again is always weird to track down a kid. A kid, yeah. Track his mom down, man. So through school contacts, YouTube messages, eventually convincing the mom to let Justin fly to Atlanta. Do you say school contacts? Like, does that mean he'd call the school and be like... It's just what it says when I started researching it. They just went school contacts to cover it. I mean, now that it's Justin Bieber, it's like, oh, cool story, but man, at the time, it's a little, that's dicey. Yeah. I mean, imagine that. You're a mom and someone hits you up and goes, hey, since you're 13, you're old to me. Yeah. I don't think so. Yeah, that's a tough one. All good. And so Scooter Braun introduces Bieber to Usher. Usher sees him perform, signs him to a joint deal, Island Records, and from there, one time, baby, all of that. And so why it's lucky. This wasn't years trying to make it in LA or Nashville where we live. It wasn't him grinding the showcase circuits or it wasn't his mom even trying to get him out there. It was literally a suburban kid in Canada who his mom wanted to show it, basically his cousins, his performance, that he didn't even win according to the story. And that is how Justin Bieber was discovered. You know what's crazy is sometimes I'm actually looking for a YouTube video and I can't find it. I'm using every keyword possible to find something. I can't find it. The fact that this video made it to Scooter Braun, like, at a time. I think he was looking for another kid, like another performer. But was he just searching kid performers? I don't know. Even though, I mean. That would be weird. I've got a few other ones too. So these aren't music, but if we're going, if you believe in luck, here's Harrison Ford's story. Do you know this one? No. Mid-1970s. Wait a minute. Is he a carpenter? He's a carpenter. Okay. Harrison Ford is not a star. He had done some very small roles, including very blink and you'll miss it parts in American graffiti and acting was not paying the bill. So we had to stop acting. So he became a carpenter in Hollywood. He built cabinets and installed doors for directors and producers. One of those directors was George Lucas. So he was working, Harrison Ford, construction in Lucas's office during the casting for Star Wars. Wow. He wasn't auditioning. He was there and since he was there, he was asked to read lines opposite of other actors as a favor as a basically a chemistry test. It wasn't even really in the running, but Lucas kept using him since he was there and kept noticing him. And then also because he really wasn't trying out for it, Harrison Ford wasn't nervous. He was just there to help. There was nothing for him to lose. And so eventually Lucas said, let's give him the part and the part was Han Solo. Gosh, that's amazing. And he is a superstar. From that role. Yeah, from Han Solo. Oh, and then, right. And then Indiana Jones. But he would have never got those roles. You're right. Had Han Solo not happened. So he did American graffiti before all that. Yeah, but it was a tiny role in American graffiti. So small that he didn't turn that into any other acting roles. Yeah, but American graffiti is George Lucas. So I guess it was just like, oh yeah, he's the guy to my movies. Awesome. Let's keep this guy around a Bill Shels. Charlie Steron. She was discovered during a bank meltdown. What? Early 1990, Charlie Steron is 19 years old. She had just moved to Los Angeles. She has basically no money. She goes into a bank to cash a check from her mom back in South Africa. Even at the time. Now, if we got a check in South Africa, that's for sure a scam. Yeah, whatever it is. The teller refuses something about out of state processing. I guess it's even harder if it's out of country. She gets frustrated. Not screaming, but she's extremely loud, passionate, animated. She refuses to leave. Now, since it is California, standing behind her is a talent agent named John Crosby. Watching the meltdown. He watches the whole thing. According to the stories that I read, this is what he saw. Presidents confidence a command of the room. I bet he also saw somebody that was attractive. Really pretty. Yes. Of course he did. He approaches her and gives her his card. And then that meeting led to her taking acting classes because he suggested, hey, why don't you start learning to act, which then led to auditions, which led to two days in the valley, which led to the devil's advocate, then monster, then an Oscar. So if she goes to a different bank, if she doesn't argue, if she's not in the line that day, if he's not in the line that day, we probably don't know, Charlie's there on. Do you think if she went to the bank and they did process the check, no problem, no argument, but she's still hot? No. I don't man, 18, 19 year old girl. Probably not a reason. Maybe, maybe, but I think that probably was part of it. The scene that was being caused, the attention drawn to her. Because in LA, hot dudes and girls are a dime a dozen. You're right, they're everywhere. If you're hot, you just move out there. It's kind of like, here's your train ticket. You're over eight and a half. Here's a free train ticket to go to Los Angeles. So there you go. I'll give you one other one. Chris Pratt, before, well what do you think his most famous movie is? Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah, me too. Jurassic World was a big friend, but yeah. Chris Pratt was living in a van in Maui. He worked at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. No way. One day, actress director Ray Don Chong went in. He waited on her. He was funny. He was not trying to be discovered because he didn't know she was. She asks if he's ever acted. Now again, he was funny with a table, probably hustling for tips. No, he's never acted. She casts him in a short film that she's directing. The project gets him footage. The footage gets him representation. The representation gets him on the WB show Everwood, then Parks and Rec, then Marvel. If he had a different section that day, if he calls in sick, if he's not assigned that table. Dang. If he's not funny, if he's having a bad day, if he's sick leading up to it. None of that happens. No Star-Lord. No, I don't know who he is in Jurassic World. No dinosaur Jones. Maybe wears a hat or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Does a tour. So that's random. That's so cool. Lucky, somewhat say. Do you know the Matthew McConaughey one? I did not. Where his buddy was a bartender at a hotel restaurant bar. Is this one of those stories where Matthew McConaughey is just saying crap? Because like his book, I don't think that's all true. It's in the book. It's in the book and he goes to see his buddy at the bar and he's sitting there and then there's a director next to him and say, he's like, hey, so what are you in town for? He's like, oh, I'm doing a movie called Days of Confused. We're shooting here, Richard Linklater or whatever. I'm a producer. And he goes, you should stop by the set. You know, like give a good look to you. I don't know. There are no roles or anything that are open, but you should stop by and see what's up. So he's like, cool, I'll do that. And he goes and that's the Wooderson role. And Richard Linklater, the director of Days of Confused was like, you know what? I have this character. We never, we weren't really going to put him in the movie. We just drive a car and like just be cool, man. It's a muscle car and just be yourself. And then he said that, all right, all right, all right, wasn't even a line. He said that it was just something that he said while they were pulling those out. All right, all right, all right. But that was his staple. But that same producer was like, cool, thank you for doing that. That was awesome, man. If you're ever in LA, hit me up. That was it. And he says, like, I didn't know, but he said, if I'm ever in LA, hit me up. He packed his van. He drove to LA and went straight to that guy's house, knocked on the door and the guy's like, who are you? What are you doing here? He's like, you told me, man, if I was ever in LA, like hit you up. I'm here. And he's like, oh, great. All right, he took me up on it. So then he showed him around and yeah, like he then he got a couple of roles and the rest of history. But the fact that Matthew McConaughey had just rolled with everything, come to the set, maybe there's a role for you, show up. Cool. Come to LA if you're ever in LA, hit me up. So he just goes. He just went with it and it worked. A lot of this too, though, is Matthew McConaughey was a really good looking guy. He was, yes. Yes. Charming. I don't think if it's me there, they offer me a role in a movie. But yes, a lot of this stuff is situational. Hang tight. The Bobby Cast will be right back. And we're back on the Bobby Cast. All right, now we're going to go over and talk to Annie Duke. She is really one of the smartest voices when it comes to decision making. And we're going to start with a look just like we were talking about here a second ago and how to define luck. Again, I have a big problem with luck, but you may know Annie from her books, Thinking and Betts. She has a new book called Quit, which is all about knowing when to walk away from things, jobs, relationships, habits. She has a fascinating background from studying cognitive psychology to being a really successful poker player, even winning a massive paper rock scissors tournament, which she did. And so she's helping people and kids make better decisions every day. Here's my conversation with Annie Duke. Do they call you Dr. Duke? I mean, I have a PhD, but people usually just call me Annie. It's actually like I'm a little like, well, I didn't want to be disrespectful. And Dr. Duke sounds like a really cool Marvel hero, but I'm just true. That's true. Maybe I should go for it. I can be in the movie. I'm super excited to talk to you for a lot of reasons. And I do want to talk about quitting in a second. But as I was doing vast research for this and I had already seen your TED talk on risk, which I thought was fantastic. And I want to get to that. Oh, thanks. I did not know that you played in a paper rock scissors tournament and won. That's, that's my day. I won Dancing with the Stars. That's my version of that. That's the coolest thing that I could possibly talk to you about. What was that about? I, well, there was a tournament. It was, I, it was like at the World Series of Poker. They did like a world championship rock paper scissors. And yeah, I won it. I don't know. That's it was fun. Did you have a plan or were you just up there winging it? There's some people where there's very clear patterns about what they're going to throw. So if you can notice those, then you can play against that. Because there's different probabilities of different throws, like for example, on the first throw, there's different probabilities. So you can kind of play against that. To tell you the truth, there were a couple of people where I took out a dollar bill and I would look at the first number and the serial number. And if it was like zero, one or two, I would throw rock, three, four or five, I would throw scissors, so on and so forth. So I basically used the dollar bill as a random number generator because I felt like if the other person was better at rock, paper, scissors than me. And when I'm playing against people, I'm noticing some patterns that I could take advantage of if they weren't as good. Then if I felt like the person was better than me, it was better for me to use a random number generator because then they can't do what I was doing to other people. Were you using the skills that you use now to write your books and speak and just generally do science in that tournament? Well, I think that, yeah, I mean, I think that the type of skills that I teach in my classes and my books and my research, they really kind of apply across the board. So, for example, you heard me say, so in rock, paper, scissors, there's three things they can do. There's, you know, they can throw rock, paper, or scissors. If someone's using a random number generator, each of those is 33 and a third. But if they have a pattern, you're trying to figure out what the probability of those different of those different throws might be for that player, sometimes given what they just threw, for example, sometimes given like their their own tendencies that you might notice. And then you're playing accordingly. And that's like that idea of like, what are the different outcomes that are available? What's the probability of those things occurring? It's just like a super core decision scale. It's one of the most important ones that you can have is kind of approaching the world that way. My final question about this, because again, I just stumbled across this, is that are you allowed to scout people and do you watch every single person play every single round? So the way they did it was everybody got paired and you were all in a line. So there were I couldn't scout anybody. Oh, got it. Because I was playing at the same time as they were. But theoretically, if it were a different, if the way they were running the tournament was different, I could have. Yeah, that's the coolest thing. OK, honestly, like rock, paper, scissors is pretty random. Like your edge is going to be relatively small. So I also got very lucky, which is another core decision scale, is to recognize the influence of luck in the things that occur. But do you believe in luck generally? Because I'm not a big luck guy. OK, I'm going to try to sway you. Please, can I tell you why first? And you can then you can poke holes in everything that I say. I'm not a big I'm not a big luck guy because I think situations happen because of situations that we put ourselves in, meaning if I walk into a gas station and I buy a scratch off, which I do and I've never hit, but I walk in and I pick the random one and I win, I won. Well, look how lucky I am. However, I made the decision to go to that gas station and put myself in a situation that allowed that quote unquote luck to happen. So it would never be pure luck. I mean, that is often how I would defend me saying I don't believe in pure luck. Can you poke holes in that? So I think that I can't. The short answer is I can't. So let's start with how we can do that. What you actually described is actually a perfect description of what I think about and what I write about in decision making is the intersection of luck and skill. So when we think about why anything occurs, it's going to occur because of two things only. Thing number one, what you're pointing out is the quality of the decision that you make, right? So you could make a poor decision, you could make a good decision. I would argue playing the lottery is on average a poor decision. Because depending on why you're doing it, but if you're trying to make money, it would be a poor decision. But it depends on what your goals are. But so you have the quality of the decision that you make, which as you just very succinctly put, like very you put it very well, determines what the outcomes are that are available to you. So if I never go and play the lottery, winning the lottery isn't an available outcome. If I do go to the store and I purchased the ticket and I fill it out properly and let's hope that I don't lose it, right? Those are all decisions that are being made. And that then creates a future, which where one of the outcomes that could occur is winning the lottery. Can I meet that? So if I don't do that, it can't happen. Right. Now, and I completely understand and I agree with you in that point. I would, again, let's just say we were having this little debate and we were getting points as we went along. I would meet that with, I don't believe in pure luck because then you're assigning luck being positive to that outcome. But who knows if I then win that money and what I do, I'm so excited. I get in my car, I'm like, wow, I can't want boom and I get hit because I'm not paying attention because my excitement has then driven me. So. So yeah, so let me let me get to the second piece. So you have the quality of your decisions, right? That determines the outcomes that are available to you. So any decision that you make is going to have a set of outcomes that are available to you, different things that could happen. You could if you're not paying attention, for example, you could get in an accident, but you could also not get in an accident. Both of those things are true. You could get in an accident that's varying degrees of bad. Right. Someone could just like nick your car. Someone could T-bone you. You could end up with whiplash. You could end up in the hospital. You could end up dead. Right. Like there's a whole variety of things that are associated with you're not paying attention in the car. Each of those things is going to occur some of the time, but not all of the time. What outcome you actually observe is determined by luck. So let me sort of take it back. Right. If I flip a coin. When the coin leaves my hand, there are two outcomes that could occur. Heads or tails. I have flipped the coin. Right. So the fact that I flipped a two sided fair coin has sort of set those two outcomes in place. Heads or tails. We happen to know that if it's a fair coin, heads is going to land 50% of the time tails is going to land 50% of the time. Which thing lands is determined by luck. So when you leave having won the lottery and you're so excited and you're distracted, there's a whole bunch of different things that could happen. Right. In the same way, if you run a red light, there's a bunch of things that could occur. The most common thing that happens when you run a red light is nothing. Right. Like most mostly not, you're fine. Right. But we know that if you run a red light as opposed to a green light, that you're increasing the chances that something very bad happens to you, but it's not going to occur 100% of the time. It's going to occur at some percent of the time. Let's say 15% of the time, something bad is going to happen to you. When that 15% happens, you don't control. But what you did do was by running a red light, you made there be a 15% chance something bad happens where if you go through a green light, it's less than 1% of the time something bad is going to happen to you. So I think that the, the quibble that we're having is about this idea of pure luck. Is there anything that is determined by pure luck? There are a few things that are determined by pure luck, but not a ton that are going to occur in your life. Mostly it's you make decisions. There are different futures that could occur because of the decisions that you've made and which future you actually observe is determined by luck. What if you're like me and you think that until your life is over, you truly can't define what was lucky or unlucky because of the different outcomes that can come from the luck or on luck. So I think that that's, so luck is used in different ways. Right. And so I actually agree with you about that. If we're using luck as something good or bad, right? So we can think about what I'm talking about is luck is a neutral thing. Right. Like 20% of the time I'm going to get, you know, I'm going to be distracted and nothing bad is going to happen to me. 15% of the time maybe someone nicks me, like just nicks my car. You know, 10% of the time I hit the person in front of me and get whiplash. Right. Like we can think about what those are and luck is determining which of those things you see that's neither good nor bad. That's just a force that acts upon us. Right. What you're talking about is can we make a judgment when we actually observe the outcome about whether it's a good outcome or a bad outcome? That's a wholly different. I mean, sorry, let me say that again. Can we make a judgment at the time that the thing occurs about whether it's good luck or bad luck? Right. Can we do that? And I think you're right. The answer is I think we're pretty bad judges of that. We have the, we have the instinct to do that. Right. As soon as something happens, we're like, ah, that was such good luck or oh, that was such bad luck. But I think that we don't actually know until long after the fact. Simple example, right? We know about people who win the lottery all the time. They're like dreaming of this. Pete, you know, it's, it's a rare thing that's going to happen. So, uh, it's a rare thing and people think of it as a good thing. And when you have a combination of something that's rare and something that people sort of consider as like universal good, right? Then when they win the lottery, they think, oh, I got so lucky in a good sense. Right. I got good luck. But we know that a lot of people's lives get ruined when they win the lottery, but they don't find that out until a lot later. Right. And then maybe they look back and they go, oh, I wish I'd never won the lottery because they realize that that judgment they made about whether the luck was good or bad, um, that they couldn't actually make that until their life unfolded. So, uh, that's something that I think about a lot in my own life. So when, when I was just out of college, I went to graduate school and I was getting my PhD and I was there for five years. I'd done all my PhD work. I was going out on the job market and I've been really struggling with, um, uh, uh, a stomach issue that was like autoimmune related. It didn't know that at the time, but I got actually really sick and I ended up in the hospital for two weeks. And when I got really sick was right when I was supposed to be going out and like doing my job interviews and getting my, you know, starting on my academic path to become a tenured professor. Like that was what I thought my life was going to be. So now I land in the hospital for a couple of weeks. I have a very long recuperation lost, you know, 25 pounds because I couldn't keep any food down. Like it was bad. Um, and I thought at the time, like, this is such bad luck. Like this has really derailed my life. I, I'm experiencing very bad luck. Um, and I was very sad about it. Then, you know, now I have to take time off from graduate school. Uh, and I have to delay going out on the job market. And during that time was when I started playing poker and poker was pretty good to me. And I would actually argue that had I not done what I did in poker, I wouldn't have the platform to talk about this thing that I'm so passionate about, which is like, how do we become better decision makers? Right. And this amazing conversation I'm having with you about luck, which is so fun. And I wouldn't be able to do that had I not gotten sick in the first place. So I now look back at that and say, whoa, that, that was kind of a rush to judgment at the time. Right. I really thought that I was experiencing bad luck, but it turns out that was actually kind of good luck because where, where my life ended up, I think, you know, on average, it ended up in a better place because that thing happened to me. And I, so I think that what you said is actually like incredibly insightful. Is that we ought to be pretty neutral about luck. Like luck is occurring, but that rush to judgment about, is that good luck or bad luck, I think, is misguided. And not only is it misguided and, you know, often we wait to actually sort of take a look back and make the judgment about whether it was good or bad, as you said. But when we judge it so quickly, I think that it can distort decisions that we're making going forward, particularly on the bad luck side. Right. Because when we experience that bad luck, we get emotional. It's very difficult for us. It actually reduces the quality of our decisions going forward. If we really live in the idea that the world has happened to us in a bad way. Right. And I think being able to just take a step back and say, luck is luck. Like this, it just is. And that's okay. Uh, and my job is to kind of lean into that and focus on the thing that you rightly said, I do have control over, which is the decisions I'm making, you know, and understand that luck is just kind of part of the equation. Yeah. I think my marriage to the definition is different than what you were describing. So I actually think I, mine comes from very similar to what you said is that I grew up poverty kid, mom of the drug addict who died, didn't know my dad. I was, I felt I had a very unlucky life. I really felt like that way for a long time, resented it even, that I had such an unlucky run. However, had I not had that, I would not have built the skill set that I have now to one, have the life that I have to be able to affect so many people in so many different ways, like without that, we'll say bad luck. I wouldn't have had all the good fortune or good luck that I've had now. So I think my relationship with the definition is until it runs its course, it really can't be defined, but that was not at all what you were saying at the very beginning. We're just talking about two different things. We're talking, we're talking about that you can divide it into two things, right? Luck as a force. And then our view of whether that luck is good or bad. Those are two really different things. Right. So it's kind of like gravity. Right. That's, that's how I think about luck. Gravity just is. It exists. Right. Like you drop something off a building, it falls because of gravity. It's why we don't go flying off the earth. Right. Like it holds us down. So it's just kind of this force that exists. That's, that's sort of definitionally how luck sort of enters into the equation. How we cognitively put this good or bad label on luck is a totally different thing. And I think that that, that just as you're saying, like, that's something that we really can't do until you have the passage of time. You know, one thing I think about, and it's kind of like in what you said, which I think can get people to understand the influence of luck is at the moment of our birth, there's just, it's just luck. Right. Like, who are we born to? What country are we born to? What year are we born in? Are we tall? Are we short? Are we fast? Are we slow? Like all of these things that literally you have no control over. Right. That just is. You were born into the family to work. Did you have any control over that? No, of course not. Right. I was born into the family I was. Did I have any control over that? No. Right. And very similarly to you, like, tough childhood, very deeply alcoholic mom, very rough household to grow up in. But, you know, I think I developed a lot of resilience from that that served me well at the time I was sad. Right. But I think that there were a lot of things that, again, created like resilient resilience for me, like this sort of bounciness, this ability to sort of be like, it's okay, like I'm going to move forward. That came from that. But think about if I had been born in 1600. Right. So when we think about like, I'm born in the late 20th century. I'm a woman. I'm born in the late 20th century. What are the outcomes that were available to me versus if I were born as a woman in the 1600s? Right. Where I would have been property. I, in fact, just missed the generation where it was mostly like secretary wife. That was available, you know, that was mainly available to you as outcomes. Right. So that moment that you're born actually sets into place what the distributions of outcomes are that are available to you. And then here's the thing. You get to make decisions that can affect where you land in that distribution. Because you can think about somebody else who's born into the circumstances you were, you know, doesn't end up in the situation you are today. Some of that has to do with luck that happens along the way, like right place, right time, like, um, who knows if you have been born before podcasts. Right. Like, you know, who knows, right? Like we don't know, but like you, you found opportunities, you made something of them. But there's other people that are born into those circumstances that don't get themselves out of it. Um, some of them make pretty good decisions. Some of them don't. But the fact is that because of the circumstances that you were born into, where you ended up in is actually a much lower probability outcome that someone's who's born into upper middle class, upper class, stable family, goes to the best high school, goes to the best college, you know, so on and so forth. Right. Like the outcomes that are available to that person compared to you are very different. It, particularly in the probability that they're going to occur. And that, that's because of this thing that literally at the beginning of your life, you have that you had no control over that. Hang tight. The Bobby cast will be right back. Welcome back to the Bobby cast. So no inherent value, good or bad in luck. It was right. Yeah. Okay. So it just is right. And, and I think where I would take that is if, what if you were born 50 years from now and women were the rulers of civilization, what was good luck is now bad luck. So it's neither because they can always be good or bad in comparison. So luck has no value. It just exists. Like gravity. It's like gravity. It's gravity. Good is gravity. Bad. I don't know. I'd like to fly. It just is. It's just, it's just part of the equation, right? And I think that we do better when we don't judge it as good or bad. I think we just do a lot better as decision makers when we say it's there. I should take that into account. Like as I'm thinking about the decisions, I don't want to, you know, one of the things that happens to us and one of the, you know, that really degrades our decision quality, like it makes us make worse decisions is that we actually discount how, how much luck is in the equation. In other words, we think we have a lot more control over outcomes than we actually do. It's called the illusion of control. As a matter of fact. So I think that the more that we can basically approach life in this way, the decisions that I make, the quality of the decisions that I make are going to change my possibilities. They're going to change the things that are possible for me in a couple of ways. One is it might create outcomes that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Right. So that would be like winning the lottery versus not. If I don't play, that's not even a possible world. Right. So, OK, so it changes the possibilities, but then it can also change the chances of those possibilities happening. The chances that I'm going to actually have that thing happen. And I think that when you approach life that way, it actually gives you a much greater sense of agency, right? That, OK, yeah, like the world happens and there's a whole bunch of stuff that I can't control, but there's this thing that I really can control, which is if I make better decisions than on average, I'm going to have better possibilities that are available to me. And those possibilities are going to be more likely than they otherwise would have. And over time, that's just going to increase the chances that I live a better life than I otherwise would have. And I think that's actually like a really hopeful message. Yeah, I think so too. And I think, you know, when we look at these two words, luck and quit, luck, most people go good, positive, good, positive, because that's, you know, maybe they're micro association with it. Quit negative, negative, negative. However, you've challenged that as well. And so why did you start researching quitting? So I only write books where something has made me very mad. And the reason is that writing a book is torture. It's just like it's a lot, you know, writing a book is like, first of all, it's hard, you know, it's just it's a lot of work. And for me, at least, I, you know, it's a lot of anxiety about like whether I'm being clear, whether people are going to get what I'm trying to say, whether the message that I'm writing about that's so incredibly important to me is something that other people are going to care about. That's hard. Um, and then when the book, you know, when the book actually goes out into the world, it's like you have just literally opened yourself up to criticism. Right. And you know that being a public figure, right? Like, you know, that's where it's like, okay. Now everybody sees my work, right? So there's a lot of things that are just like really hard about writing a book. So I won't write a book unless there's something that's just digging at me. And what was digging at me in the case of quitting is that Angela Duckworth has written this wonderful book, wonderful book called grit and everybody loves it. And as I was watching the discourse around grit, um, what I realized is that people were kind of like what I felt like missing the point of what she was saying. Um, what she says in that book, grit is even if things are hard, if they're worthwhile, it's a good quality to stick to them. Simple message, right? Just because it's hard doesn't mean that you should stop. Being gritty means sticking to hard things when those things are worthwhile. How would we define worthwhile? Well, worthwhile might be different for you than me because we have different goals. But let's broadly say worthwhile means that I am doing something that is going to help me to advance toward my goals. It's going to help me achieve my goals in alignment with my values. That let's define worthwhile that way. Okay. So I think that's an amazing message because I think that's great and it's true. The problem is that as I saw the discourse around grit, it was just sticking to things as good, full stop period. That's a good quality to have sticking to things. And I just looked at that and I said, well, that's completely absurd. And the reason why it's completely absurd is because if something isn't worthwhile, it's not a good thing to stick to it. Now, that wouldn't be a problem if our bias was to stop doing things. If our bias was as soon as something got hard, we were going to stop doing it. Then, okay, maybe it's not a big deal because we're actually quitting too much, right? But it's not true for adults. For a little kid, like for a six-year-old, it's true, right? Like you got to encourage a six-year-old to stick to things even when they have a bad day on the soccer pitch, right? But someone 25 years or older, the science is really, really clear that we stick to things too much, actually, that we're naturally way too gritty and that we don't quit enough. And you can see that in the way that people talk about quitting, right? Just as you just said, it's just negative, right? It's like quitting is for losers, man. It's like if you quit something, you failed. You know, quitters never win. Winners never quit, right? And I just looked at that and I was like, everybody thinks that quitting is failing. That it's such a bad thing. But first of all, it's not failing if the thing you're doing isn't worthwhile. Because then you get to stop doing something that's not worthwhile and you get to go and do something else that is worthwhile, right? So that's a double-edged sword. That is worthwhile, right? Like, so that's a double win, right? So that's clearly true. So how could it possibly be a failure to quit something that's not worthwhile, right? Like, that has to be a good thing. But everybody thinks it's a bad thing. And I just was like, I just got to rehabilitate this word because it's such an incredibly important skill. When you're living in a world where there's luck, because sometimes you make a great decision, the world doesn't go your way. Should you stick to it? No. So like when you're making decisions where luck can influence the outcome and you know, like you're not omniscient, right? You know, so little in comparison to all there is to be known in the whole universe that what that means is that when we start things, kind of definitely speaking, like after we start them, we're going to learn new things. And sometimes those new things are going to make us say, ah, I wish I had known that when I made the decision in the first place. I wish I knew then what I know now because I would have done something else. And under those circumstances, then you should do something else. You should quit, right? But we over index on grit and we don't quit because we think that we failed if we do. So that's why I was just like so passionate about this idea that people, like mostly you should be quitting. You should actually be sticking to very few things. And I wanted people to start quitting more and feeling better about it and feeling like it was a success to do that. I feel like talking with you, and I think a couple things that you've said have led me to this, that you feel like as long as you're playing the odds, regardless of what happens, continue to play the odds. Would that be an accurate assessment? Yeah, I mean, you have to take, you do have to take some risk into account there, but let's set risk aside for a second. Life is, let's, you know, I'm a poker player. Life is a game. Let's act like we're playing poker. Um, where you're trying to make decisions that on average open up better possibilities for you and make those better possibilities more likely to happen. And if you keep doing that over and over again, what that means is that you're making decisions that have a higher chance. This is where the odds come in. Have a higher chance of getting you to achieve the things that you want to achieve. Getting you to achieve your goals, whatever those goals might be, right? It's going to help you do that. And the better decisions you make, the more likely that you'll achieve the things that you want to achieve compared to another version of you who made worse decisions. So that's all we're trying to do, right? So it is a game of odds, right? We're trying to increase, increase the likelihood that good things happen to us. That's the thing that we're trying to do. And we do that through great decision making. So you just have to keep saying, I just have to, I just have to focus on my decisions. I've got to make sure that my decisions are really good, because that's the thing that's going to make you have a better life. So focus more on your decisions than the outcome. Generally speaking, well, for sure, for sure, for sure. So there's a problem called resulting, which is we get very, very outcome focused. Not only do we get really outcome focused, but just sort of like the luck thing. We put a judgment on whether an outcome is good or bad, and then we decide whether a decision is good or bad based on that. And that's actually really bad to do. In a situation where we actually already know that a decision is good or bad, we can see this mistake pretty easily. So Bobby, if you go through a green light and you get in an accident, are you like, damn, that decision to go through a green light was terrible. I'm never going to do that again. I'm not. Right. And if you go through a red light and you happen to get through safely, are you like, great decision. I'm a great red light driver. I'm going to do that. I'm not. No. And the reason that you're not doing that in that situation is because it's kind of settled. Right. It's like, we know green light, good, red light, bad. So we're not going to make this error. But like in the simplest sense, I know a lot of people, and I'm sure you do, where they're like obsessing over a menu at a restaurant, and they're trying to decide what to order. Remember, like they haven't been at the restaurant before. Last time I checked, they're non-omniscient and they don't have a time machine. So they can't travel forward in time and see what that dish is like before they order it. So this is a good example where you're just trying to think like, what are the things I like and increase the probability that you have a yummy meal. Right. So what happens though, when you order the chicken and it's dry and it's not very good, and maybe you don't even finish it. Right. What's the first thing that everybody thinks? Ugh. I should have sort of ordered something else. I made a mistake. That's a very good example of what we call resulting. Right. Well, how you should have ordered something else. Like you've never been in that restaurant. You haven't tasted that food before and you don't have a time machine. So you were making your best guess. It's not a mistake that you ordered the chicken. That was your best decision given the information that you had at the time. Right. It's kind of hard for people to wrap their heads around it. Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. And we're back on the Bobby cast. The last thing that I want to touch on, and I really appreciate the time I wrote in one of my books, the whole thing about it's better to make a decision and get it wrong than to make no decision at all. Because a lot of my friends get paralyzed by decision making because they don't want that. They don't want to make the wrong decision because that will set them back to which I would argue it's better to be set back quick and learn why you're being set back so you can set forward than to always sit there and be paralyzed in the fear of making the wrong decision. So make the wrong decision better than make no decision at all. Do you subscribe to that? Okay. Like so completely. All right. So this is a super fun topic. It actually relates to quitting. So let me start at the basics. Right. What's happening is that. Okay. So let's imagine that this friend of yours is in a job that they hate and they have to make a decision like should they quit their job and go to a new job? I bet this is probably a conversation that you have a lot and they say, oh, like I don't want to do that because what if I take this new job and I hate that and what if I make a mistake and what if it turns out really badly? Does that sound familiar? It does. Yeah. Okay. Here's the deal. Staying in the job you're in is a decision. That's the thing that people miss. So you described it as they'd rather make no decision at all, right? Then a decision that might work out badly, but making no decision at all doesn't exist. Like it's grammatical as a sentence of English, but it doesn't make any sense because making quote unquote, no decision at all is allowing the status quo to continue. Whatever you're doing, right? Like I'm in a relationship. I don't want to make a decision. About whether to leave it. Well, that's a decision. I'm choosing to stay in it. I'm in a job. I hate it, but I don't want to quit because what if I take a new job and I don't like that either? Okay. Then I'm making a decision to stay in the job that I'm in. So let's just start there. It's a decision either way, right? So like if you can reframe it that way and say, which is better, right? Like a choice to stay where you are or a choice because they're both choices. That's number one. Now, part of the problem is that there's this phenomenon, which is really interesting. It's called loss aversion. And it was identified by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. And Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel laureate. He wrote a very, very famous book called Thinking Fast and Slow. Very, very, very popular. Super, super smart guy. Nobel laureate. Super, super smart guy. Nobel laureate in economics. Identified this thing called loss aversion. And loss aversion is basically the phenomenon that when we experience what we would think of in the moment as a bad outcome, but I'm going to say in the moment because we've had this discussion, right? When we experience what we think is a bad outcome, it feels a lot worse to us than a sort of symmetrically good outcome. So like we can think about this way. If you lose $50 in blackjack, it feels about as bad to you as winning $100 feels good. So there's this like asymmetry. Losses feel really bad to us. So when we're making decisions, we actually sort of over index on the chances of a bad outcome. So we're not thinking the same way about good outcomes versus bad outcomes in the way that I'm talking about, right? Like, well, on average, is it going to be good or bad? And so maybe when you're thinking about the past, you're like, ah, wait, but what if it gets intercepted and that instead of thinking about overall, does this help me win? Right? Okay. So that's loss aversion. It turns out that this like cognitive phenomenon that you just identified, it's actually really, really like deep. It's like such a deep concept once you actually think about it. This idea of I don't want to make a decision because what if the decision I make is turns out badly? That when we stick with the status quo, we don't think about it as a decision. So what that means is that we're not loss averse in the same way. We're not as worried about bad things happening from the status quo. We don't feel like it's our fault. So when I stay in that job that stinks or I stay in that relationship that stinks, it doesn't feel as bad to me than if I switch to something new and that stinks. Because I only worry about the bad outcome, the outcome I'm not going to like. I worry about it so much more on the switch. So what that does is it gets us to stick to things that are bad for us. And I remember I had a conversation with someone that I thought was so interesting. There's a woman who was like stuck in a job that she really hated. And by really hated, I mean for years really hated it. And I was having a conversation with her. She actually reached out to me because she had heard me on a podcast talking about quitting. And she wanted to talk about it with me and she said she had a new job offer. And she just was like, she didn't know whether she should take it or not. And so I said, well, you tell me about the job that you're in. And it was like, it's horrible. I hate it. It's ruining my relationship with my children. I have to work 24 seven. My phone's always going off. Like they're always like, mommy, why aren't you paying attention to me? I'm totally miserable. Now you can imagine at that point I was like, hold on a second. Like what's going on? Like why aren't you quitting? And she said to me the thing that your friends say, what if I take the new job and I hate that? Ah, oh, it's this loss aversion problem. So I said, you're okay. Again, thinking about playing the odds. I said, all right, I want you to imagine that you stay in the job that you're in. It's a year from now. What are the chances you're happy? And very quickly she said, 0%. I said, why? She goes, well, I've been unhappy for a really long time. I don't think at this point anything is going to change. I said, oh, okay, 0%. So let's imagine you take the new job. I understand it might not work out. But it's a year from now. What do you think the chances are that you're happy in that role? She said, well, I don't know. Like I'm not in it yet, but I would say 50-50. And I literally just said, is 50% greater than zero? And it was like this moment, right? It was like she got, it released her from the clutches of this, I don't want to make a decision. What if that new thing doesn't work out? Because it was just like this total, it was like a revelation. And she quit the next day. She was like, oh, oh, I get it. Right? So I think that this is like a really important conceptually to understand. Like there is no such thing as not making a decision. Because you're making a decision to stick with the thing that's already happening. So once you recognize that, I think you can start thinking about it differently. Separately, and I would recommend this for your friends. A lot of times when we go to make a decision, we kind of make it the biggest version of the decision. And we do that in two ways. One is we're like, we just, we're moved to a new city and we just thought we're going to buy a house instead of rent. Right? Like buying a house is a lot more consequential than renting. So that makes like the bad outcome kind of bigger, like the possible bad outcome kind of bigger, because we sort of committed to something much bigger. Right? That's one thing. The other thing is we imagine when we go into the decision that we can't stop it. Right? Like we think about that as I'm going to choose this thing and I'm good. I have to just do this for the rest of my life. Which also really increases the stakes. So what I always recommend, and this was your point, like do something small and find out fast, is do things that lower the impact of getting a bad outcome and that you can stop doing really easily. So if I rent, it's a lot easier for me to get out of a rental than if I buy a house. Dating is way easier for me to get out of than marrying. Right? So you can think about like, let me do some small things that can help me to get information and increase my confidence about the bigger thing that I might end up doing. So instead of thinking about the big thing, do small things really fast and figure out like, do they work? Do they not work? Like, does it feel good to me? Does it feel like this is making me happy? Am I getting good outcomes or bad outcomes from it? And like rep that. Try to be more of a dator in your life, because that releases you from that fear of making decisions. The book we referenced was Quit, The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. And you have a sub-stack that I want to send everybody to. You can go to Annie's website, anniduke.com, and subscribe to her sub-stack. This is so fun for me. I hope this wasn't a waste of your time. I really appreciate it. No, not at all. Yeah, I really appreciate the time. And yeah, I loved to see when you're speaking. I'm really, I subscribe to a lot of the things that you say and you write about. So thank you for the time, Annie. Well, I appreciate that. You're a very good intuitive psychologist. That's what I would say. Because you actually think a lot of the things that I already write about. And I think that that's amazing. Like the way that you were putting those in this kind of intuitive way was so helpful and so fun for me in terms of the conversation. So I just really want to say I appreciated that so much about you. And the conversation was super fun for me. Oh, thanks, Annie. Thank you so much for having me. Or thanks, Dr. Duke, I should say. Thank you, Dr. Duke. And hopefully I'll see you sometime soon. Thank you very much. This has been a BobbyCast production. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.