Column | Knowing when to stop is an art

‘Because my own learning curve is stabilizing and becoming less steep after these two years, it’s time for me to take on a new challenge’; “Leadership also includes the idea that this role is temporary. We are all useless doodlers and God’s work is always teamwork”; “I know what this job requires and I know that I don’t have enough left in the tank. It’s so simple […] And so to you Neve: Mom can’t wait to be here when you start school this year. And you, Clarke, let’s finally get married.”

Just a few shutdown announcements from lately that made the news. The latest was from Jacinda Ardern, who resigned as Prime Minister of New Zealand, she was inundated with compliments but there was also disappointment (‘sin’, ‘too soon’). The second was from ChristenUnie leader Gert-Jan Segers, who left politics after ten years. He was also much appreciated, what modesty, after all, to call himself a doodler in the light of eternity. The statement by economist Barbara Baarsma, who is leaving Rabobank, stirred more complex emotions, including me: Is there no higher calling for her than your own learning curve?

Stop, just dare. After reading of Stop. The power of knowing when to leave (2022) by decision and strategy expert Annie Duke I see the world through stop glasses. Most of us quit too late, I learn from Duke: with jobs, connections, companies. Duke knows what she’s talking about: she had to give up the aspiration of a college career due to health problems. Then, more or less by chance because her brother invited her, she became a very good poker player, she became the world title holder. Poker players have to be good at one thing: stopping in time. Duke learned to do this by trial and error: never play more than eight hours and suppress the urge to keep playing when you lose.

His book is full of analyzes of moments of abandonment well known to the media: the boxer Muhammad Ali (left too late), the comedian Dave Chappelle (on time, to come back later). It draws mainly on major sporting decisions. On Mount Everest, climbers always agree to an hour’s stop in advance, because you can’t think clearly in the middle of your summit attempt. Even if you are only a hundred meters from the top, you respect the stopping time. She remembers a situation in a traffic jam where two climbers turned around well before the stop time because they realized they couldn’t make it to the top before the appointed time. These two survived, many died during this famous journey.

I thought about my own downtimes. One of the hardest decisions I made ten years ago was to stop working as a university professor of literature. Some jobs are harder to quit than others, Duke writes, citing college high school here. There are few positions within the humanities and the number of applicants is large. This makes it difficult to leave, because it is a one-sided decision. Duke lists other reasons why quitting smoking can be difficult: if your identity is strongly tied to what you do or if you have already invested a lot of time and money (sunk cost-principle). A playful example is deciding to stop watching a movie. The longer you’ve watched, the more difficult it becomes. Less funny are the costs to society as a whole if major projects are not stopped in time. She calls the California bullet train project Bullet Train. Billions were invested, but bigger than expected problems arose during construction. Because no clear stopping time has been marked in advance, people keep pumping money into it to no avail. Duke’s advice is not to dwell too much on costs incurred in the past, because they have already been incurred.

Thanks to Duke’s insight, I can now say without a doubt that Ardern is a terrific stopper that we can learn a lot from. She has chosen between two routes: one route has the certainty of a busy schedule, the likelihood of a decline in popularity, and is heading straight for a burn-out; the other road is uncertain, but promises happiness in life. For us, his choice may seem too soon, but says Duke, it’s the main thing to stop just in time: it’s always too soon. What a great example for her daughter Neve and all the other girls in New Zealand, Ardern sets: you can become Prime Minister later, be a mother and a partner and keep your health.

Steve Jensen is a philosopher and writer. She writes a column here every two weeks.