We just quit too late. We want to be much more sure that we need to take that loss because

that moment we quit is when we go from failing to having failed. When we go from a loss on paper

to a realized loss and as human beings we hate that.

I'm Chris Hill and that's Annie Duke. Once upon a time she was one of the best professional

poker players in the world. She gave it up a decade ago and is now a decision strategist

with a venture capital firm and an author. Her latest book is Quit, the power of knowing

when to walk away. At our full-fest investing conference last week Morgan Howell talked

with Annie Duke in front of a live audience about the differences between being stubborn

and being patient, why we often quit too late and how pre-mortems can improve your investing.

Morgan kicked things off by asking Annie how she got the idea for her new book.

The origin story is basically I wrote my last book which was how to decide and released

it into a presidential election. Not the best decision.

There was maybe a page, a half a page on quitting and why having optionality, the option

to be able to walk away from something is so valuable when you're making decisions

under uncertainty. When we make decisions for most of them we know very little and comparison

to all there is to be known and obviously there's just the influence of luck on the outcome.

Post decision you start to find some things out, how is the world turning out, how is my

decision turning out and having the option to be able to react to that. It's able to get

out of the decision and get back to an option you may have rejected before to a new option

is really important for speeding your initial decision to start up. That's what that little

sort of page in there was about. When I was promoting the book and doing podcasts they

were asking me about all sorts of other things in the book and I kept directing back to this

...