Here is the full text and summary of Julia Keller’s talk titled “How to Get Ahead by Giving Up” at TEDxOhioStateUniversity conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Julia Keller – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
It was a dark and stormy night in Morgantown, West Virginia. I was 19 years old, sitting cross-legged on the grimy linoleum floor of a gritty little apartment in a so-so neighborhood near the campus of West Virginia University. I had been sobbing for hours.
I’d been sobbing so long and so hard, in fact, that I’d polished off an entire box of Kleenex, and now I was forced to move on to a giant bath towel as I cried and I snuffled and I blew my nose, then I cried and I snuffled and I blew my nose some more.
I was living on my own away from home for the very first time in my life, and one month in it’s pretty clear this is a total disaster. I’d graduated from college early and applied for a graduate teaching assistantship at WVU, and like the old joke goes, the bad news is I got it. So I’m taking courses and I’m teaching courses, but most of my time is spent just being completely miserable. I’m lonely. I’m homesick. I’m confused.
I’m distraught, filled with despair, until finally came that one memorable night when I slid to the floor and simply fell apart. So why didn’t I just go withdraw from school and head home? Because I didn’t want to look like a quitter.
Because like all of us, I had absorbed all the proverbs, all the slogans, I’d nodded along with all the cliches, you know the ones, quitters never win and winners never quit. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot in it, hang on. When you’re going through hell, the only thing to do is to keep going. Keep on keeping on. Stay the course. All of it.
But the problem was my mind and my body were giving me the exact opposite message. They were telling me in no uncertain terms that it was definitely time to throw in the towel, especially because the towel I was clutching at that particular moment was sodden with tears and snot.
Now years later, I began to ask myself, why? Why had I put myself through that emotional torment? Not the torment of going to grad school, but the torment that ensued when I decided to quit grad school.
Why do we believe that grit and perseverance are always the right way to go? Why are we so easily persuaded that hanging in is superior to dropping out? So I started to talk to other people as well about their Morgantown moments, their quitting moments, moments when they too came to a precipice, a threshold, and thought, I really need to change here.
I decided to write a book about quitting. So I expanded the circle of my inquiry and I began to interview neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists and other scientists. I wanted to find out how the animals with whom we share this planet, the birds and the bees and the barnacles from single-celled microorganisms all the way up to giant whales in the ocean, how did they deal with quitting?
And by the way, I did initially go home, left Morgantown, hung out at home for a while, and then I returned to grad school later, earned a PhD at Ohio State. I worked as a journalist for a while, and it was what I learned in journalism that I took with me on my mission to explore the history of quitting.
And here’s what I found out. We’ve been thinking about quitting all wrong, and we’ve been doing it even worse. Let’s head to the lab. Scientists are now inching closer and closer and closer to unlocking the secrets of what happens in our brains when we quit, abandoning one path for another.
A neuroscientist like Dr. Misha Ahrens at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute can tell you which neurons in the brain, among the approximately 86 billion neurons inside the average human noggin, which of those neurons sizzle and snap and fire in that elegant symphony of synapses that occurs each time we say, I quit.
Animals have always known that quitting is a great strategy for survival. They have to. An animal lives on a very thin margin of existence, so they can only, if they expend too much energy on behalf of a goal that’s not commensurate with food and energy, they’ll perish.
Think of the finches on Galapagos Island. These finches have a very narrow range of culinary options. They subsist on seeds inside a narrow or small plant that has a spiky outside called a caltrop. Now they have to use their beak to dig out those seeds, and if they spend too long digging out that seed, they’ll perish. So a finch understands what all animals understand. Quitting is a master strategy for survival.
So why don’t we humans do it? Why don’t we do it? Why do we carry on long past the point when carrying on makes any sense? Personally I blame John Wayne. Actually, not really. John Wayne just happened to have starred in a movie called True Grit. You know it, and you know many, many movies like it. They preach to us that grit and perseverance make you a hero. Heroes hang in. Heroes don’t quit, even if it’s at the risk to their lives.
But people who quit are bums and losers and bad guys. Movies like High Noon or Rocky, Rocky 1, Rocky 2, Rocky 3, Rocky 4, all the way up to Rocky 16,487. A movie like An Officer and a Gentleman starring Richard Gere. Now in An Officer and a Gentleman, Gere plays Mayo. He’s a brash, cocky, headstrong young guy who aspires to be a Navy pilot, but standing in his way is Gunnery Sergeant Foley, played magnificently, by the way, by Louis Gossett, Jr.
Now Foley thinks Mayo is not military material.
He thinks he absolutely is the wrong guy to be a Navy pilot. So he tries to get Mayo to quit. He puts him through a grueling series of physical ordeals, really rough stuff, until finally Mayo’s lying flat on his back, slathered in filth and sweat. He’s exhausted. It’s spent totally at the end of his tether.
He looks up at Foley and he says, no sir, you can kick me out, but I ain’t quitting. Now, I love that movie, but I hate that message, because sometimes quitting is the right thing to do. It’s exactly what we should do, but we don’t. Popular culture products teach us again and again that quitting is a bad thing, and only a bad thing, but a moral failing.
So where and when and how did this anti-quit bias really begin? Time for another quick side trip. We’re in the middle of 19th century England, and a man named Samuel Smiles, and that was his real name, is just about to become the toast of the town. In 1859, Smiles sits down at his desk and he begins to write a series of short biographical portraits of notable men of the day, and it was all men then, of course, industrialists, engineers, politicians, sea captains, inventors. He finds the true lines of each of their lives, and he says it’s all about perseverance. They hung in. That accounts for their success. They didn’t quit.
So he writes this book, and he publishes it, and it’s called Self-Help, with Illustrations of Character and Conduct. So how did it do? Monster hit. Mega bestseller. Copies of this book are flying off the shelves, and it’s being discussed on every street corner, every carriage, every tavern, every drawing room in England. It sells millions and millions of copies.
Smiles soon becomes a household word, a household name. So why? Why was it so popular? Because the message it says is an easy one. The message says one plus one equals two. Persevere and succeed, quit and fail, easy peasy, and it really resonated with people. It was an easy one to get your mind behind. And we like easy answers. Why not? I like easy answers.
It tends to sand off all the rough edges of life. It tends to get rid of those troublesome complexities, all of those pesky paradoxes. Now Smiles’ book was published about a century and a half ago, and since then, of course, the self-help movement has exploded. Now it’s a roughly $11 billion annual business all around the world.
You know what I mean. You see it everywhere. The self-help articles, the self-help telecasts and podcasts and webinars, the TED Talks. Self-help slogans are emblazoned on T-shirts and refrigerator magnets and on oven mitts and bumper stickers and screen savers and mouse pads. It’s everywhere, all telling us the same thing. Hang in and succeed. Quit and fail. And it’s all up to you.
If you follow this plan, you’ll make it, and it’s all in your hands. There’s just one problem with that philosophy. It’s total baloney. Sometimes things happen to us that we can’t control. We get sick. Someone we love gets sick. Or we’re hit with a fire or flood or earthquake or other catastrophe that wipes out everything we spend our entire lives building.
Or we’re born poor. Or black or brown in a predominantly white culture. Or we’re born female. Or we’re born with a profound intellectual or emotional or physical disability. The world isn’t fair, but the self-help movement insists that it is. If you follow this course, you’ll do fine.
You know, Adam Grant, the best-selling author and business professor at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School said this, “Holding up hard work as the key to success allows us to maintain our belief in a just world and to rationalize inequality.” Some numbers.
In 1978, the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans controlled about seven percent of the wealth. Today, that same one-tenth of one percent at the tippy-top controls more than 18 percent of the nation’s wealth. Put it another way, less than 750 people at the very top of the economic ladder in the United States have more wealth than the bottom 60 percent combined, 60, 6-0.
Now those are astonishing numbers, those are absurd numbers, those are unacceptable numbers, and yet accept them we do every day. Why? Why aren’t we out marching in the streets demanding change or some kind of reckoning? Why aren’t we texting our congresswomen every day? Because of this misguided belief in grit and perseverance.
Because we have been sold on the idea, and make no mistake, it was sold to us, we’ve been sold on the idea that those people at the top with the private jets and the multiple homes and the fancy cars worked harder. Worked harder than you and me and everybody we know.
Now I’m quite willing to concede that Bill Gates worked hard, Elon Musk, sure, Jeff Bezos, I’ll give you that. Those fellows don’t press the snooze alarm on their alarm clocks too often, absolutely. But there’s nothing magical about perseverance, nor is there anything shameful about not persevering when you decide to make another choice.
So do I think you should run right out of here today on your way home and quit something? Law school, med school, your job, your marriage, maybe before you even pull in the driveway you send a quick text, sorry honey, I’m out. No, no. But I do hope you’ll consider what I call precision quitting. If something doesn’t feel right, stop, wreak an order, ask yourself, is this really the path you want to be on? Is this really the goal you want?
Now the answer may well be yes, and that’s great, carry on. But the answer might also be no. And either way, yes or no, the answer will come from your mind and your heart, and not because you were afraid somebody was going to come along and call you a quitter, like you’re still back on some middle school playground. And don’t think of quitting as a capitulation or a surrender, think of it as a strategic maneuver.
You know, Dudley Carlton, who was a 16th century British diplomat once wrote, “Take a step back in order to leap higher.” When you think of it, that really does work. When you have a jump to make, what do we do? You step back a little bit, you take a pause, a breath, you gather your energy, and then off you go, and you fly higher and further and faster because of having taken that pause. It really does work in real life. It really does work, and we all know that it does deep inside.
So I hope that you will think about that, and think about quitting in a new and different way. I hope you will realize that quitting doesn’t have to mean you gave up. Quitting just means you’re getting where you want to go by another means.
And if we quit more often, I think we’re much more willing to forge a world that can accommodate all of our unique circumstances, each one of us. Our shortcomings as well as our gifts, our burdens and our histories. So quitting is a good life strategy, yes, but it’s also something else.
It can be the first step in creating a world that is more just and more fair and more tolerant and humane as well. So I wish you all a lifetime of quitting, a lifetime of fresh starts, of new roads, of radiant tomorrows, and of dreams you can’t achieve until you first quit, letting go of the old and the familiar and embracing the beautiful and the exhilarating unknown.
Thank you.
Want a summary of this talk? Here it is.
SUMMARY:
Julia Keller’s talk, “How to Get Ahead by Giving Up,” explores the concept of quitting and its often-misunderstood value in personal and professional growth. Here are the key main points of her talk:
1. Personal Struggle: Keller begins her talk by sharing a personal anecdote about a dark and stormy night in her youth when she was a struggling graduate student. She emphasizes the emotional toll of not wanting to quit because of societal pressures.
2. Cultural Beliefs: Keller questions the pervasive cultural belief that grit and perseverance are always the right path. She challenges proverbs like “quitters never win” and explores why we cling to these clichés.
3. Animal Instinct: Keller delves into the animal kingdom to highlight how animals understand the value of quitting when expending too much energy on fruitless tasks can be fatal. She contrasts this with human tendencies to push through adversity at any cost.
4. Influence of Popular Culture: Keller cites iconic movies like “True Grit” and “An Officer and a Gentleman” as examples of popular culture perpetuating the idea that quitting is a sign of weakness, while enduring hardships makes one a hero.
5. History of Self-Help: She discusses Samuel Smiles’ influential 19th-century book “Self-Help,” which promoted perseverance as the key to success. Keller critiques this oversimplified message and its failure to account for external factors and inequalities.
6. Precision Quitting: Keller introduces the concept of “precision quitting,” advocating for a thoughtful and strategic approach to deciding when to persist and when to change direction in life.
7. Reevaluating Quitting: The speaker encourages individuals to embrace quitting as a valid and sometimes necessary option for personal growth and fulfillment. She suggests that reevaluating our attitudes towards quitting can lead to a more compassionate and just world.
In essence, Julia Keller’s talk challenges the notion that quitting equals failure and urges us to rethink our approach to persistence, recognizing that quitting can be a strategic maneuver and a path to personal growth. She emphasizes the importance of considering individual circumstances and external factors when deciding whether to persevere or make a change. Ultimately, Keller’s message encourages a more balanced and compassionate perspective on quitting in pursuit of a more just and fair society.
