Quotes from Annie Duke

our brains evolved to create certainty and order. We are uncomfortable with the idea that luck plays a significant role in our lives. We recognize the existence of luck, but we resist the idea that, despite our best efforts, things might not work out the way we want. It feels better for us to imagine the world as an orderly place, where randomness does not wreak havoc and things are perfectly predictable.

This is why poker players remind themselves that poker is one long game. We would all do well to remember that life is one long game as well.

Job and relocation decisions are bets. Sales negotiations and contracts are bets. Buying a house is a bet. Ordering the chicken instead of the steak is a bet. Everything is a bet.

Finish lines are funny things. You either reach them or you don't. You either succeed or you fail. There is no in between. Progress along the way matters very little.

We would be better served as communicators and decision-makers if we thought less about whether we are confident in our beliefs and more about how confident we are. Instead of thinking of confidence as all-or-nothing (" I'm confident" or "I'm not confident"), our expression of our confidence would then capture all the shades of grey in between.

But just because there are a lot of benefits to setting goals doesn't mean that there isn't a downside to them as well. As you might already suspect, clearly defined finish lines should come with a warning: Danger, you may experience escalation of commitment.

Adults ask children, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" We don't ask, "What job do you want?" We are asking who they will be, not what they will do. This is a difference with quite a large distinction.

Be picky about what you stick to. Persevere in the things that matter, that bring you happiness, and that move you toward your goals. Quit everything else, to free up those resources so you can pursue your goals and stop sticking to things that slow you down.

When we own something, we value it more highly than an identical item that we do not own. Richard Thaler was the first to name this cognitive illusion, calling it the endowment effect. In fact, he introduced the endowment effect in that same 1980 paper where he coined the term "sunk cost." He described the endowment effect as "the fact that people often demand more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it.

In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing. We are constantly deciding among alternative futures: one where we go to the movies, one where we go bowling, one where we stay home.

was a victim of our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome.

They point to numerous negative consequences of goal setting, several of which interfere with rational quitting behavior. In particular, they note the pass-fail nature of goals, their inflexibility, and how pursuing them leads to ignoring other opportunities that might be available.

Have you ever had a moment of regret after a decision where you felt, "I knew I should have made the other choice!"? That's an alternative version of you saying, "See, I told you so!

victim of our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome.

The quality of our lives is the sum of decision quality plus luck.

As you already know, grit is good for getting you to stick to hard things that are worthwhile, but grit also gets you to stick to hard things that are no longer worthwhile.

But for so many of us, that fear of falling short makes us not want to start. As Richard Thaler quipped, "If a gold medal in the Olympics is the only grade that passes, you do not want to ever take your first gymnastics class.

That we make both types of errors, sometimes sticking too long and sometimes giving up too early, shouldn't be that surprising because whether to stick or quit aren't separate decisions. They are one and the same. Whenever you choose to stick, you are, by definition, not quitting. The reverse is true when you choose to quit.

Being in the losses is as much a state of mind as anything else. We don't see ourselves as being in the gains, even though we've gone farther than where we started, because we're not measuring ourselves by how far we are past the starting line. We're measuring ourselves by whether we're short of the finish line.

The endowment effect has obvious applications to quitting behavior. Selling something you own is the equivalent of quitting; you are quitting your ownership. Not selling something you own is a form of persistence. When you are deciding whether to sell your wine, or your car, or your house, you are choosing whether or not to persist in owning those things.

When possible, divide and conquer. Have the people who make the decisions to start things be different from the people who make the decisions to stop those things. For clients of mine who are institutional investors, I have suggested that type of strategy as a way to improve their sell-side decisions. Have the committee approving what to buy be different from the committee approving what and when to sell.

When we're choosing among new options, loss aversion causes us to favor the ones that have the lowest absolute loss associated with them, even if those options come at a lower expected value. In other words, our aversion to taking a loss causes us to make decisions a rational actor would not.

The result is that we'll quit when we're ahead, even if we're giving up good opportunities to win more. If we're behind, we don't want to quit, even if persisting—to try to get to the other side of zero—is more likely to make things worse.

Progress along the way should count for something, but we discard it because goals are pass-fail, all-or-nothing, yes-or-no. There's no partial credit given.