Snippet 31: Steven Bartlett On Why Quitting Is Your Biggest Strength
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One of the things that I took away from your first book, Happy Sexy Millionaire, we can talk about the title of that in a moment. But one of the things I really took away was the quitting framework. I wonder if you can talk through that for people who might not have come across it. I feel like you know it better than me. But I'll pop at it. So the reason I wrote the quitting framework is because I realized in hindsight that I was able to quit things easily.

easier than most people. Let's take one step back. Why is quitting important? In life, we glamorize starting, right? But my observation was that the advantage I've had, as I've said, was being able to quit fast and eat with peace and ease. And when you just think logically about starting something, right, or saying, it's also the same with like saying yes and no to things. In order to start something in life, you actually...

first need to quit something else. So you can't start a new relationship unless you quit the last one. You're not going to start a new startup unless you quit the last one. You're not going to start a new career unless you've quit the last job. So quitting and starting should be held in equal regard. And there should be acknowledgement that they have a two-way relationship with one another. They're both the actions of winners.

People say quitting is for losers and they say like starting is for winners. In fact, quitting and starting are both for winners though. And the most successful intelligent people I've ever met have an unbelievable ability to quit things that make no objective sense. You're quitting that high paying job to go and deal, to go and do card tricks at a table in Bristol, Darren Brown. You're quitting that amazing career as a lawyer and

that your parents are now so proud of you, of to go and spend the next 10 years going up and down the country in pubs and cracking jokes, Jimmy Carr?

It just objectively seems to make no sense, but subjectively they've reached a certain level of ease. So I could relate to myself in the same way in the regard of if you look at what I've quit from like, stop going to school because I realized that that wasn't going to be the paper that I got at the end of the process wasn't going to be enough, especially compared to my brothers. Quit university after that first lecture, quit my first startup after two years, quit my second one after about six years and lots of little quitting in and amongst there.

why was I able to quit with peace at times when objectively you would think I was a madman for doing so, when I was leaving so much apparently on the table? And so I tried to make a framework, a framework that other people could use to try and make their quitting decisions through. So at the start of the framework, you ask yourself, am I thinking of quitting? It's either yes or no. So if you are thinking of quitting, the framework begins. And I created these two subcategories.

which you can define for yourself, which I think is important to do. You're either thinking of quitting something because something's really hard, like it's difficult.

And then, which would be, you know, you're running a marathon and you're on the 23rd mile and you're doing it, you know, to raise money for a charity, but it's really, it's painful. It's difficult. It's causing discomfort. Or you're thinking about quitting something because it like, it sucks. And that's more of like an emotional, mental thing. It's just, it just doesn't feel good to you on an emotional, mental, psychological level. So let's go down the hard route. I'm thinking of quitting because it's hard. The first question you should then ask yourself is,

Is the hardship worth the rewards on offer? So you're running that marathon, you're raising money for that leukemia charity, you're on the 23rd mile, but it's worth it. The hardship is worth the reward at the end of it. If the hardship is worth it, don't quit. If the hardship isn't worth it,

then you should quit because the worst thing to do in life is to do something that is hard and meaningless like those are those are where all the problems happen when i think about studies of the impact of not having autonomy in your work and working on a production line and not having meaning and purpose in what you're doing every day and how that impacts your health and disease rises in your body that is the worst situation to be in let's go down the other side of the framework

By the way, do correct me because you know this framework better than I do. No, you got it spot on. Okay, good. We're going to go on the other side of the framework. So you're thinking about quitting something because it sucks. You're in a relationship, your husband, you know, the magic has just left the relationship. You're in a company and there's problems at work, but you, you know, you haven't yet had the conversation with your boss. The next question becomes, do you believe you could make it not suck?

Right. So in the context of a marriage, that might mean going to marriage counseling and having a difficult conversation, thrashing it out with your partner and going through those issues. If the answer is no, so it sucks, you think you can't change that, quit. If you believe you could make it not suck, the next question to ask yourself is,

Is the effort that it would take to make it not suck worth the rewards on offer? So like you look at how that marriage might look if you were to resolve it, you believe you can. Is it worth it? Is Dave worth it? Is the reward on the other end of that process to fix it sucking worth it? If the answer is no, quit. You believe you could make it not suck anymore, but the effort it would take is not worth the reward on offer, quit.

If you believe you could make it not suck, and the effort it would take is worth the rewards on offer, stay and fight for it. And that's my simple framework, which is intentionally ambiguous.