Early in my career I had an uncomfortable couple months that taught me that the correct number of times to decide to leave a company is once.
Sometimes you can get away with twice.
More than twice is almost always a bad idea.
So having decided (again) to leave Axon, I don’t expect there to be another do-over.
I did some thinking while we were traveling over the holidays and came to realize that while I still want to be doing something, I was less and less confident that what I was doing was that something.
Annie Duke, professional poker player turned author, describes quitting as a prediction problem. You should quit, she argues, when you’d bet that your future not doing the thing is going to be better than your future continuing to do it. Sh argues that it often feels like we’re quitting too soon – but that if you wait long enough to be sure quitting is the right move, you’ve probably waited too long.
By the time we got home I’d thought about it as much as I thought thinking about it could help.
All that was left was to place a bet.