In her book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, Annie Duke shares her inspiration and recommendations to help us make better decisions.

These are some of my favorite recommendations from reading the book.

Chapter 7 You Own What You’ve Bought and What You’ve Thought: Endowment and Status Quo Bias

“The endowment effect is a cognitive bias where we value something we own more than we would if we didn’t own it.”

“We can be endowed to objects but also to our own ideas and beliefs.”

“Endowment is an obstacle to quitting because when we irrationally value things we own, we miscalculate their expected value. We might think the company we started or the project we devised or the belief we have is worth more than it actually is.”

“We prefer to stick with the status quo.”

“We are more tolerant of bad outcomes that come from sticking with what we are already doing than bad outcomes that come from switching to something new. This phenomenon is part of omission-commission bias.”

When you say, “I’m just not ready to decide yet,” what you are really saying is, “For now, I am choosing the status quo.”

“Even in highly data-rich environments like professional sports, sunk cost, endowment, and status quo bias distort decision-making.”

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