REMIX | FAILURE: How Quitting More Leads to Bigger Sends
As climbers, we fail a lot. And yet, we don’t even like to hear the word. Our ability to return to unsent projects time after time, season after season, along with the deeply ingrained idea that every failure ought to be reframed as a successful learning experience means we rarely – if ever – actually confront the concept in our sport.
But maybe we should.
In this REMIX episode, we'll hear from climbers Nina Caprez and Erica Lineberry, mindset coach Josie McKee, movement coach Jeremy Fein, and cognitive psychologist turned professional poker player turned decision strategist, Annie Duke, about how we can accept, embrace, and maybe even practice failure to become better athletes.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
Find Jeremy Fein online at: feinmovement.com
Find Josie McKee online at: mindathletetraining.com
Find Erica Lineberry online at: cragmama.com
Find Nina Caprez online at: ninacaprez.ch
Annie Duke Thinks You Should Quit, Freakonomics podcast episode featuring Annie Duke
How Do You Know When it's Time to Quit?, Freakonomics podcast episode featuring Angela Duckworth
STUDIES MENTIONED:
Knee-deep in the big muddy: a study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action
Authored by Barry M. Staw; published in Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 1976.
Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness
Authored by Steven D. Levitt; published in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Working Paper Series, 2016.
When the going gets tough: Grit predicts costly perseverance
Authored by Gale M. Lucas, Jonathan Gratch, Lin Cheng, and Stacy Marsella; published in the Journal of Research in Personality, 2015.
What doesn't kill me…: Adversity-related experiences are vital in the development of superior Olympic performance
Authored by Mustafa Sarkar, David Fletcher, and Daniel J. Brown; published in Journal of science and medicine in sport, 2015.
VIDEOS:
Music featured in this episode comes from Blue Dot Sessions.
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Audio Clip 00:00
The fans at Fiserv Forum are ready to go.
Kris Hampton 00:15
April 26 2023 It's the first round of the NBA playoffs and the number one seed Milwaukee Bucks are hosting the number eight seed Miami Heat at the forehand. The Bucs need the home court advantage because they are in a shock to just about everyone down three games to one and of best of seven series.
Audio Clip 00:38
Butler inside again and one. Oh Wow. These Miami Heat will not go away. nine in a row now for Jimmy Butler
Kris Hampton 00:48
Going into the fourth quarter, Milwaukee's up by 16 points. But with only two minutes left on the clock Miami superstar Jimmy Butler has led the charge to make it a tie game
Audio Clip 01:00
and the Bucs cannot corral Jimmy buckets
Kris Hampton 01:04
but the Bucs have a weapon on the floor Giannis Antetokounmpo considered by many to be the best player in the league and right now with the chance to keep their championship hopes alive, This is when the greats step up and Giannis does with the go ahead bucket the draws a foul in the process
Audio Clip 01:26
bucket and the foul
Audio Clip 01:27
This this is when legends are made
Kris Hampton 01:38
But Giannis misses the free throw and Miami quickly ties it back up. The final 90 seconds is a chaotic jumble of air balls out of bounds passes and surprise shots. But Miami knows what they need to do
Audio Clip 01:52
under a minute to play. You know Jimmy Butler is gonna get the ball. Miami wants him to bring this game home. If you're the Milwaukee Bucks you got one job. Do not let Jimmy get a shot.
Kris Hampton 02:04
and Jimmy Butler got the memo about legends being made. So with two seconds to go down by one basket
Kris Hampton 02:12
Over the top, to Butler. Up and in! Jimmy Butler ties the game with a half second to go!
Kris Hampton 02:22
Forcing overtime. Five more minutes. Another chance forGiannis but also another chance for Jimmy
Audio Clip 02:35
It's a good thing they have overtime they can make it all alright.
Kris Hampton 02:39
Over time isn't going so well for the number one seed bucks. With 90 seconds to go. They're down by seven. But Milwaukee fights back and in a story book ending in the making, Giannis steals the ball from Jimmy Butler and pulls his team within two.
Audio Clip 02:56
Giannis has it in the open floor. Matthews back to holiday
Kris Hampton 03:00
And then the moment. Nine and a half seconds to go. Bucs need a bucket to tie, a three can win. Giannis comes down with the rebound. And as he crosses half court, he's got just over six seconds to make it happen. The opportunity every athlete hopes for, dreams up since they were kids - the game winning shot when it matters the most.
Audio Clip 03:29
Two point game. Butler steps in front.
Kris Hampton 03:31
And then Jimmy Butler steps in front of Yanis to pass the ball it's passed again and the clock winds to zero before the Bucs can even get a shot off.
Kris Hampton 03:43
Failure
Shannon Sharpe 03:48
nobody from the books more than that basketball last night
Kris Hampton 03:53
That's Shannon Sharpe retired NFL Hall of Famer turned sports analyst.
Shannon Sharpe 03:59
You saw it Giannis you tell by LeBron Robert the basketball. I've never seen a basketball player Usain Bolt from the ball like Giannis was doing last night. I was like, Bruh... You got to do got to win this game. You got to have somehow find a way to get to a game six man get this was this was a this was a cataclysmic failure, failure, failure.
Kris Hampton 04:31
Unlike in climbing, Yiannis doesn't get to try again. The game is done. They lost theyre out the season is over. There is no redo. No, I'll just come back next week and try again. He can't change his flight to get another day of attempts. He can't for years say someday I'll go back and I'll win that game. It's just a failure. And what's interesting about that word, the F word, when it's not followed up with some nod toward eventual success or some profound lesson is that it made you feel away. It felt negative, maybe even mean. But it's not. It's just a fact, the opposite of success, and we can't always succeed. We fail a lot. Today, we'll hear from climbers Nina Caprez and Erica Lineberry, mindset coach Josie McKee, movement coach Jeremy Fein, psychologist and scientist Angela Duckworth and cognitive psychologist turned professional poker player turned decision strategist, Annie Duke, about how we can accept, embrace, and maybe even practice failure to become better athletes.
Shannon Sharpe 06:13
Theme song
Kris Hampton 06:26
What's up everybody. I'm your host, Kris Hampton. And today on remix from Power Company Climbing, failure, how bigger and better failures can lead to bigger and better sends. So the way I make these remix episodes is that I look back at the hundreds of interviews I've done, I take the themes that keep coming up again and again. And I pull out relevant parts of different conversations, read the research, search for experts discussing the theme, gather actionable ways to improve, and then I figure out how to present it to you. Well, this time, I dug deep into the archives, and I realized that every single time failure has come up in conversation, even conversations explicitly about failure. We've reframed it as a success, just like in this clip from a great conversation with Brian Antheunisse from 2019.
Brian Antheunisse 07:25
No matter if I had done it or not done it. The progress is so clear. Yeah, I mean, it was the reason that I had the motivation to, to train so hard, I owe that boulder problem, everything. And it gave me exactly what I needed, which was the site and the motivation to put forth the effort, which I did. And regardless of if I sent it or not. I am in the best shape I've ever been in my whole life. And it was directly because of all the hard work. So I'm, I'm sure that I will come back and do that boulder problem. I'm not gonna let it slip away. But I absolutely consider this a success.
Kris Hampton 08:11
BA had literally just come from the boulders after an unsuccessful final attempt of the trip on his project, in our reframing of it as a success, because of the learning the motivation, the tangible progress isn't a bad thing. But now looking back, I can't help but think that we were missing some lesson that could have been learned. And on one hand, I'm a coach. So turning a negative into a positive is part of my job. But what's flipped this whole concept for me is that I'm not so sure that failure needs to be seen as a negative. And if it's not a negative, do we need to flip it? See, we constantly promote the idea that failure is necessary for success. But then we immediately want to reframe it, rather than accept it. And honestly, going back through my archives, it was a little shocking to me that I've never had a conversation about real failure. And I say real failure, because the way we've been conditioned to talk about failure isn't failure at all. We immediately flip it and talk about the lessons learned how it made us stronger, et cetera, et cetera. But we gloss right over the failure itself. We avoid it. I talked with Shauna Coxsey at the Vail World Cup in 2017. And she said this.
Shauna Coxsey 09:38
Yeah, like thinking of times I failed and succeeded. It's like, okay, like, I'll take what went well, but yeah, I don't I don't really remember the times I didn't do well. I don't know, maybe I have a bad memory...
Kris Hampton 09:46
See, learn from your failures, but don't think about your failures. It's hypocritical. I know I'm belaboring this point. But in this episode, what I hope to do is show you how we avoid it and maybe convince and to that we shouldn't, that if we didn't, it might help us send more. Now, back to Giannis Antetokounmpo, after losing to the Heat in the first round of the playoffs, he had to expect that this question was coming.
Reporter 10:19
Do you view this season as a failure?
Giannis Antetokounmpo 10:23
Oh my god. You asked me the same question last year. Eric. Okay. Do you get do you get the promotion every year? On your job? No. Right. So every year you work is a failure? Yes or no? No, he's not the failure is Steps to Success. You know, and if you've never, I don't want, I don't make it personal. So there's always steps to it. You know, Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six Championship, the other nine years was a failure. That's what you're telling me? I'm actually a question yes or no? Okay, exactly. So why are you asking that question? It's the wrong question. There is no failure in sports. You know, there's good days, bad days, some days, some days you are able to be successful so that you're not, Sunday's is your torso. This is not your turn. And that's what sports about you don't always win.
Kris Hampton 11:17
Okay, so on the face of it. That seems like a great response. Like you. When I first heard it. I was like, Yeah, Eric, why would you ask that question again? I mean, it's certainly stirs up some emotion. And it's a textbook example of how so many of us have learned to engage with failure. And we're cheering for Giannis. But is he right? Is this right?
Giannis Antetokounmpo 11:44
There's no failure in sports.
Kris Hampton 11:46
Is there no failure in sports? Well, since Giannis invoked Michael Jordan, let's see what his airness has to say.
Michael Jordan 11:59
I missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. That is why I succeed.
Kris Hampton 12:26
So now this episode is basically a motivational speech battle. But while Jana says TED talk of an answer, and that M J. Nike ad, both give us the keep going, you'll get there eventually feeling. It's the Nike ad. That's actually closer to reality. There is failure in sports. Now let's turn to someone who understands failure as well as anyone may be better. One of the most unstoppable forces the NBA has ever seen. The big Aristotle himself, Shaquille O'Neal,
Shaquille O'Neal 13:02
the definition of failure, the lack of success, or the inability to meet expectation. When you're the best player in the world you expected to win every year. They won two years ago. We expect them to go back to back because many grades did they lost in the second round, but they come back stronger than number one. See, we expect them to win again. You didn't win and happen is the season of failure. Yes. Are you a failure? Hell enough. No, you're the best player in the world. But before you succeed, you must first learn to fail. If you say I played 20 years and I failed 16 of them. I'll say you're right. Because I was expected since 92, being the first pick, be the best big man in the league and to win all the time. Right? So you know, when you use the word failure, and it comes with negative connotations is may sound bad but as athletes, that's how we think if I don't do certain things correctly, I fail. It's okay. You can learn from failure you can bounce back but that's the definition in the book and that's just how we think that's what it is. It's not a bad thing and and I don't want to you know, people think I'm disrespecting you out because I'm not. He's one of the best players to ever play the game. Definitely Hall of Famer. But when you don't when the mission is not complete, the mission has failed.
Kris Hampton 14:21
So Giannis failed, the Bucs failed. Shortly after seeing the press conference, my friend Jeremy Fein posted a reel on Instagram echoing similar sentiments about the statement. There's no failure in sports. And because he's both a movement coach and skill acquisition nerd, as well as a new addicted climber. I wanted to get his thoughts on it.
Kris Hampton 14:45
What was your initial reaction to seeing that clip? Because mine was Yeah, fucking tell them Giannis. And then I was like, Wait a minute. Is he just avoiding failure?
Jeremy Fein 14:57
I think I'm right with you. My First watch of it was all subtext. I was like, Okay, here you have a really frustrated athlete who just lost on the biggest stage on TV. And you have a reporter whose job it is to get sound bites, asking him a leading question, a loaded question. And yeah, he's just kind of like, lashing out a little bit, which is totally understandable, kind of defending himself, like, listen, we lost, that happens. It's a it's a game, there's a winner and a loser, like, totally understandable. And then kind of like you I kind of digested it again. And I was like, Alright, what's he actually saying about failure? And that's when I kind of came to a different point.
Kris Hampton 15:41
Talk me through how you think of failure.
Jeremy Fein 15:48
So to me, failure is always gold dependent. You can only fail if there's some sort of, like, predefined context for what success would be. And so you can't look at someone else and know whether they're failing or not, if you don't know their goal. So like, what I'm not saying is, Jana has failed, because I don't know what Jonas's goal was, I imagined coming into the season, the team had some pretty lofty goals for like outcome based performance in the NBA Finals. And I'm guessing they fell short of those goals. But that's a guess. Right? Like, if his goal is to build for the future, or provide for his family, or have fun, like any number of goals, he probably checked off all season. And that's great. So to me, it's always context dependent, like there's no such thing as failure unless you have a goal and you fall short. And that would be failure. And it's just a useful concept. Just to like to the extent that goal setting is useful than failure becomes useful.
Kris Hampton 16:50
I really liked this definition of failure. We have to know the goal in order to call it a failure. In the honest clip, the reporter asks if the season was a failure, not if yawn is failed. And I can't be sure but I have to assume that the goal of the season was to win a championship. And if not, the Bucs should maybe reevaluate their goal setting. But Yanis pretty immediately takes the question personally. Why? Because failure has been deemed a negative thing by pretty much all of us.
Jeremy Fein 17:28
It is totally possible to fail. And for that to be good. Right? So it's not that like you become a failure when you fall short of a goal. But like, let's say I set a goal for the year, like a New Year's resolution, right? It is totally possible and in fact very common, that not accomplishing the goal leads to like a better life outcome, right? Maybe you were wrong when you were trying to predict the future. So you set a goal, you fall short, and your life is great. And on the flip side, you can set a goal, banging your head against it for a year, get really frustrated, have your priorities shift, but not recognize it succeed in the goal. And that can be a bad thing. So it isn't to say like, failure is bad and success is good. It's just that they can be useful constructs when you're trying to plan a practice or competition in a sport.
Kris Hampton 18:23
See, I knew I reached out to Jeremy for a reason. In fact, in a departure from the previous remix episodes, I reached out and got several new interviews for this episode, because I wanted to explore the side of failure hadn't really been looking into. Anyway, what Jeremy says here is that failure is basically just a data point. It's a data point about your readiness, your effort, something in your process. What it's not a data point on is you your character, just like Shaq said it has no bearing on you as a person or even as a player or climber. It's just a reflection of your preparedness to reach your goal. And like I mentioned, Jeremy is a fairly new climber, but he's caught the book. And when he made this post, there was another layer to it that I wanted to explore. When you when you posted about the Yiannis clip on your Instagram, you combined it with you trying this boulder in the gym.
Jeremy Fein 19:25
It was brutal. To me like, like you said, I haven't been outdoors yet. So this was like the biggest project I've taken on in my less than one year of climbing. And my gym doesn't announce when things are coming down. So it was as I started thinking, like, wow, this is really doable. It's a new grade for me and I've really enjoyed working on this climb and I think I can actually send it as I started getting close to that every session was like, are they going to take it down tomorrow? Which again leads to real really tough decision making, because you don't have the full picture. But sure enough, I made progress. five sessions in a row, I got to the point where I touched the last hold three times on my last day, and they took it down the next day. So here we are failure.
Kris Hampton 20:19
Did you walk into the gym the next session, thinking you were going to climb on that climb?
Jeremy Fein 20:27
Fortunately, or I guess, for better and worse, no, a setter came up to me. The last day I was working on it. And was like, that's coming down tomorrow. And I went through some crazy thoughts. I was like, Can I come back later tonight? Do I like wake up early to come back in the morning? Yeah, I was like, finally I just was like, Okay, I have to accept that. I didn't make it this time. I failed with respect to my goal. And I had an awesome experience doing so
Kris Hampton 20:57
right there. That's what I was looking for. He didn't say it wasn't a failure, because I learned something or had an awesome experience. He says, I failed. But I also had an awesome experience. We can and should learn from our failures. But that doesn't mean they weren't failures. I'm going to say this again. And I'll probably say it more later. But I want you to keep this front of mind, particularly if you're still like well go failures bad. Most of us agree that failure is a necessary component of success of learning of improving. But then we want to say that wasn't a failure. Why?
Josie McKee 21:42
So one of the things with failure, right? Is that like people identify with like, that was a failure versus I am a failure. And that, like, the latter is detrimental. Like, we don't want to be failures as humans.
Kris Hampton 22:01
That's Josie McKee, mindset coach and accomplished climber. I sat down and chatted with her because I know she likes untangling mental puzzles. And I was going in circles about this topic. And she pointed out that it wasn't just my years of podcasting that have fallen into this trap.
Josie McKee 22:20
This is almost like the what Disney has done to a generation of girls thinking that we find love and live happily ever after totally is like doing this to the art culture, right? You're going to, you're going to work really hard. And eventually you're going to find success. So maybe the real question is why is the hero's journey so appealing to us?
Kris Hampton 22:48
We are going to fail over and over again in our lives, in our businesses at our work in our relationships. We're going to encounter failure. And I think we look to the stories as a way to feel better about those failures. And see that there is something on the other side
Josie McKee 23:11
Hope.
Kris Hampton 23:13
Yeah, hope, particularly an outdoor climbing, that boulder or route will likely always be there for you to return to. And this constant reframing of failure is a way to give ourselves hope. But it's Disney hope. And hope is not a strategy. And we're here for strategies.
Josie McKee 23:38
We need to be more honest with ourselves about what our goals are, and admitting when we failed. So that fear of failure is not a block in our performance.
Kris Hampton 23:50
Exactly. I went to Josie because I was looking for an epiphany. I knew there were lessons being left on the table by our constant reframing of failure. And this is that lesson. And I alluded to it in the previous remix episode on effort. The athletes who regularly practice giving more effort in the face of uncertainty are getting better at trying things even when failure is on the table. So just like I suggested putting yourself into pressurized or fatigued situations to learn to give it all I'm now saying that maybe we should be putting ourselves into situations where the failure has some finality to it, like Jeremy experienced in his gym. And here's why. How many times have you been planning a trip with a big goal that you want to try? And you get there? You try it and it feels hard. Maybe too hard to do in two weeks or whatever you have. What do you do? Well, in an Instagram poll, most of you said You stick to the goal no matter what. But so many of you are liars. I know because I've talked to you, many of you realize that you might come home with nothing to show for your trip, no sins, just a failure, and you bail to easier things. But what if you didn't?
Kris Hampton 25:23
And I also asked a question on instagram about the one that got away from you. And nearly every person responded with some version of, but it's not over yet, I'll get back there. And from that, I realized something important that unless you're a competitor, or you've had your climb stripped from the gym, then failure in climbing, the kind with finality is more akin to quitting. And if there's one word more loaded than failure, it's quitting. And I'm about to tell you that you should quit more. We'll be right back.
Kris Hampton 26:08
Becoming a better climber isn't only about adding more weight to your max hang or deadlifting two times body weight. Frankly, what's more important is that you understand your motivations, your approach, and that you're honest with yourself about the amount of effort you put in both on and off the wall. My book, the hard truth, simple ways to become better climber is a collection of 26 essays that shine a light on these qualities, the ones that limit us the most, the qualities that are hard to measure, the simple to manage, simple that is went back to his intention. Every essay in the hard truth is written about real climbers in real situations, maybe you know, some of them, maybe it's you. You can find the hard truth at power company climbing.com, or anywhere else, you get books. Now back to the show.
Kris Hampton 27:04
So before we go further, we have to sort of redefine what we're talking about here. When I began working on this episode, I was looking at a more macro sort of failure, we fail on moves and attempts all the time. And we're really good at recognizing those as a necessary part of the process a key for improvement. I'm calling these micro failures. But it's the bigger, more macro failures, the ones that we can't just try again next week that were concerning me. And in climbing most of the time, that comes down to giving up to quitting. See, it goes like this, we make a goal. And then for whatever reason, we fail to reach that goal. This time that is then what? How do we decide not to go back? And why on earth? Would we do that? Why could it possibly be good for us to make the decision to walk away to quit? In preparing for this, I talked with two climbers who called it quits on big projects, both meaningful both within their grasp. And between the two of them. I suspect you'll hear some of yourself in their decisions.
Erica Lineberry 28:22
My name is Erica Lineberry.
Kris Hampton 28:25
Erica is a climber and coach who along with her husband homeschools their two kids, they live in Charlotte, North Carolina, just under four hours from their crag of choice the New River Gorge. So as you can imagine, she doesn't get out climbing as much as she or any of us for that matter would like.
Erica Lineberry 28:45
100% of the time I have been a weekend warrior. And I'd say 90% of the time probably we are Four Musketeers. I've got my kids with me. My son is 13. And he now is lead climbing and sending things of his own. And my husband also climbs and then I have a daughter that just turned nine. And she comes every now and then. But a lot of times she's just content to hang out at the base of the cliff.
Kris Hampton 29:16
Now that might sound ideal, a whole family who climbs or wants to hang out at the crag. But you've certainly had to sacrifice some of what you want to climb on for your partner. Right? Right. I hope so. Or you might just be the bad partner but that's another podcast anyway. Now multiply that with several agendas in the mix, not to mention the usual family dynamics that can get tricky.
Erica Lineberry 29:43
Long projects. You know, things that take days and days and days tend to not work out as well for us. logistics are definitely a crux a lot of the time.
Kris Hampton 29:54
Despite these cruxes Erica has climbed 5.13 She works hard for it. And she cares about it. Like most of us, while it isn't her main priority, every time she goes climbing, she does want to perform well and explore her own limits. But of course, that's not the only climbing experience out there.
Nina Caprez 30:14
Hello, my name is Nina Caprez. I'm from Switzerland.
Kris Hampton 30:18
Nina, who has been called the Swiss machine and the Swiss knife has a bit of a different story. She's a professional climber who's claimed some of the most impressive a sense of big, adventurous objectives all around the world. They're obviously still logistics to figure out but part of being a pro is that you get to focus more of your time on your own performance.
Nina Caprez 30:41
I was really surfing on a wave of like, Lucky ventures happened in my life, like, always teamed up with a good partner, we always had really good times, I got really strong because I put a lot of time and energy into getting better. Not just like physically, guys, but really like technique wise, I wanted to become a rock climber, which can approach every big route in the world. Everything was really rolling. I had amazing opportunities to be like, you know, pet rock trips, and like Bolton trips all over the world. And like, it was so good. It was really good.
Kris Hampton 31:17
So we've got two climbers who are trying to do their best just at different ends of the logistical cruxes spectrum, so to speak. And like all of us as part of their own personal pursuit of progression. They've got goals.
Erica Lineberry 31:32
The route is Pudd's Pretty Dress. It's a 12d out at Endless Wall at the New River Gorge. And the reason we wanted to go down there was my son was a relatively new leader at that point and working his way through five nines and such and there's not that many of those at the new so we thought hey, let's go down to the Kaymoor slabs and Steve and I we can work on Pudd's Pretty Dress, something we'd always looked at from the description, it seemed like something that would fit our style. We knew it would take my son a while to get through all those slabs and we thought hey, this is a good place for our family to camp out on the weekends this fall.
Kris Hampton 32:16
Pudd's pretty dress is a sustained, slightly overhanging 10 Bolt chunk of some of the best sandstone on Earth was opened in 1990 by Doug Reed who let's just say was particularly well suited for the style of the New River Gorge and somehow always found the routes with the biggest moves.
Erica Lineberry 32:38
I was really excited out the gate because for me it was the first time I'd ever done all of the moves in a day at that same grade at the new. I'm not super short, but I'm definitely not tall. And so a lot of times the new at that grade I've got to get pretty creative and so there's usually at least one section where I've got to do something weird and it takes me a while to figure it out. And this is not like that there was no stopper cruxes I did all the moves pretty quick. So I thought things were pretty well in hand. I thought it was going to go that season for sure.
Kris Hampton 33:15
Meanwhile, across the US, Nina Caprez, on her second trip to Yosemite is forming a mega goal of her own
Nina Caprez 33:24
Sending the most iconic was famous route in the world.
Kris Hampton 33:27
first climb by Warren Harding, Wayne Merry and George Whitmore in 1958, the nose of El Capitan pretty immediately became the most famous route on the most famous cliff on the planet. But when Lynn Hill freed it in 1993 at 14a, and then returned to free climb it in a day, it catapulted the legend of the route into the stratosphere.
Nina Caprez 33:51
And I did the Nose with my boyfriend at the time like ground up pretty classic style, you know, freeing as much as possible aiding through the hard pitches. But I was somehow I wasn't really like, wow, the nose. I was just like, oh my god, like so many people on the route and it was so dirty. And then I remember the night we came down. I was at a little shelter in a friend's house and had an intersection action. So watch video of Lynn Hill trying the changing corners and like, dammit, I need to go back up there. Just try. So in the middle of the night I woke up my boyfriend like hey, what do you think we go up there and I try and he's like, No way. Like, okay, that night I reached out to Lynn. I was like, hey, Lynn, what do you think we should try together, and she has never seen my message because I sent it on Instagram and she's really not like us to use socials.
Kris Hampton 34:49
So the seeds have been planted in pretty classic ways. First, Erica sees faster progress than she expected on a high for her grade, and F Every single one of us is lured in by clear examples that we've improved particularly when the route is gorgeous and will be a real feather in the cap. And Nina has looked to history to find her inspiration for this potential new project, sending the most iconic, most famous Route world. Over in the New River Gorge, Erica is making steady progress on Pudd's pretty dress. But being a mom who lives four hours away, means that she really only gets on the route a few times a month.
Erica Lineberry 35:32
What ended up being the last day on it of that season. First go of the day, I fell on a big dead point move going to the very last bolt. And it would have made for an amazing story. It was one of those where almost the entire time I felt like I was about to come off. Like you know, I felt like I could, I've got two or three more moves in me. But that's it. And I just kept going. And then I had this one big dead point move, which even off the hang at that point felt super hard for me. But I got my feet up and I hit the hold kind of falling away a little bit. And when I went to regrip I fell. And I thought no worries, like the weather looks great for the next weekend. And shortly after we got back. There was a wildfire at the base of beauty mountain. And access to both beauty and endless were closed for the next couple of weeks. And then it was holidays and cold and Christmas and all that happened. So that season it got away and sort of a negative like I almost sent but it had this like negative vibe to it felt like oh, it's just because I couldn't get back to it, you know,
Kris Hampton 36:44
so close. She could taste it. You know the feeling. You've been there. And Lynn finally checks her DMs. So Nina is about to experience a similar thing.
Nina Caprez 36:57
She didn't she came back to him. She's like, hey, yeah, Nina, we should go and try and like all right, well, that was six months ago. But let's try. And so we teamed up for a months, we I figured out the route for three weeks. And then we did the ground up, where I freed all the pitches except Changing Corners, really I had like no clue. And I was like well, that's that's a big piece, I need more time.
Kris Hampton 37:23
Like I said, You've been there. One move away from something big, you fell going to the anchors ran out of time. But you were so close. So of course you're going back. But you've listened to the remix process and effort episodes. So you're going to go back better prepared.
Erica Lineberry 37:45
That previous fall, I had felt really fit all of our training was on the treadwall. So we were super fit, but not very strong, comparatively. So that winter I focused on strength and power. And there was another project that I've been working on the 13a called Logotherapy. And so I thought this would be a great early season, I'll get strong, powerful, come back, knock that out. And then I'll get back to Pudd's
Nina Caprez 38:13
I trained so much like I got so focused. I mean before when I team up for the first time I trained really hard and is really, really focused on that. So even more than before i i put away everything in my life that could take me off from performing or from my climbing. It was just it was so radical. And everything that helped me to become better I took and it took advantage and I trained and I was focused and yeah.
Erica Lineberry 38:48
So logotherapy went great did that. And by the time I got on Pudd's, it was like late April, early May. And good news of that is the moves felt fantastic. I mean, like boulder, both those moves felt easy, that same move that I'd fallen out a few months before I thought how can I possibly call it that it felt you know, it felt so much better now, so that's good. The negative was by that point. I mean, it's in the sun. And it was, as you know, like, May is hot there, you know, so I felt like I didn't have enough time that season. So it came up that fall. And I just couldn't get it together. I couldn't match my high point. I couldn't understand why
Kris Hampton 39:29
something just wasn't clicking. And then the last day of the season, Erica convinces her husband to hang the draws. And while up there, he's exploring a hold and comes down with new beta.
Erica Lineberry 39:43
So I go up there and I try that and that beta feels a lot better. Again, that ended up being the last day of the season. So I feel like every single time it would get to the end I would feel like this new achievement was unlocked or I had this new base and so I can't give up now. like I'm right there.
Kris Hampton 40:02
Uh huh. This is sounding familiar. Nina is wrapping up her training, figuring out the best tactics and is on her way to the US.
Nina Caprez 40:13
We rapped in from the top, I tried changing corners for maybe a week or so. I couldn't do it in, in one go, but I had the pieces. So I knew it could it could go. And then we did the ground up. Like she was really enjoying the time with me in the wall. And I was leading I was hualing, I was climbing, you know, sending and everything pretty. We're pretty fast. And then
Erica Lineberry 40:45
we come back. I'm armed with this new beta of how to use this weird hold. And I mean, again, I can't explain it. I tried high point, I tried low pointing, I tried overlapping links. I tried every single sort of redpoint strategy in the book. And my last go on it was again, Thanksgiving weekend, and my mom had watched the kids. So it was a kid free weekend. And we went out there and her husband was like we'll take both days down there if you want like this is like give it hell.
Nina Caprez 41:16
I got stuck like four days on trying changing corners because I couldn't do it. I remember my feet just ripping off. And I was hanging neuro. And it was so close. And then I just start crying. A thing I never do. It's just, it's just too much. I couldn't do it anymore. Like it is just is gone. Everything is gone.
Erica Lineberry 41:47
My last go up there. I thought, okay, that's that and I thought I would be really sad. I thought I might cry at the anchors like all these things. And I didn't feel that I felt this like overwhelming, just relief of like, hey, I can put this behind me.
Nina Caprez 42:05
And then I remember, I started singing and then then started singing. And so we're singing up there. And I was crying and singing at the same time. And yeah, and then I was well, Fuck it, I can't give more.
Kris Hampton 42:23
The F word failure. But what is it that turns these scenarios from just another micro failure into a macro failure? Why quit now? What's different
Erica Lineberry 42:37
as that season went on, it was like, I mean, I don't want to be melodramatic, but almost like this sense of dread of like, I just got tired of going out there. And it felt like we got into this rhythm of here's where I tie in and have the these kinds of redpoint jitters, here's why. I'm tired, go to the bathroom, come back tie in. Here's where I climb here. And then here's where I look at the people on in the hand jam over on Kaymoor slabs and then here's where I feel good and then fall off. And it was just this rhythm that kept you know, repeating itself. And I just I kind of felt like maybe I've overstayed my welcome.
Nina Caprez 43:18
I was just really I was broken, I would say, yeah, I was broken. And mentally it was just so hard like to realize that. I knew that I couldn't give more like I tried it until the last bit of Yeah, you know, I gave everything. And when I came back I called Cedric Lachat is a boy that we dated for like eight years, but we still climb here and dare together it was really, really my best partner. And he's like, No, Nina, you can't give up. If we go back together, and I can help you with hauling. And you know, that will make things are easier. And then I can also figure it out. And you know, the energy will be so different in terms like Yeah, maybe maybe. But I knew that there was something I had to learn.
Erica Lineberry 44:05
I realized sort of towards the end, this route has taught me way more than any, like anything else that I have ever sent, you know, so maybe that's a sign that I've got what I needed to out of it. At this point.
Kris Hampton 44:21
They both failed, they gave up. And they both had lessons to learn. But learning a lesson doesn't cancel out failure. They can coexist and do necessarily. But if failure feels like a negative indictment against you as a person, then quitting can feel like a very direct reflection of the worst of your character. We tend to reduce that reflection by saying, Well, I had something to learn. And this is probably true. But if you stop there and don't explore the lesson, well, that's a whole different kind of failure. Both of these were him in, explored the lessons that were offered to them. And whether they knew it or not. They were stumbling upon what economists call opportunity cost. Keep that term in mind, we're going to dig into it later. But just like Cedric tried to convince Nina that she just can't give up. Erica was fighting her battles as well.
Erica Lineberry 45:22
I owe it to myself, like, I'm trying so hard. I owe it to my family, my husband who's like, you know, rappelling in and putting weird GoPros up like I you know, I owe it to the me that showed up at 6am at the gym, and then I would get there and tie in And I'd be like, Yeah, but I don't want to do this anymore. You know?
Kris Hampton 45:41
Was there ever a feeling of like, you were owed something in return? For putting in all of that work and showing up and going back and dialing it in and season after season? Did you feel owed?
Erica Lineberry 46:00
That's an interesting way to put it. And I hadn't thought about that until you ask that. But I think that was me last fall. Like, I think most of the season, it was like, Hey, I put in the work for two seasons on this. And I've got my beta dialed and it looks good. And it feels good. Like, Now is my time. You know, like I deserve this, you know? And yeah, I hadn't thought about it until you said that. But probably Yeah, there was probably some feeling of being owed that.
Kris Hampton 46:32
You said there was something you needed to learn to? Do you know what that is?
Nina Caprez 46:37
Now I know what it is. But at that time, it was hard. I was like, why? And as soon as I came back from the US, and I slept with Jeremy just because he you know, I slept with Jeremy. That's weird to say, but I just needed something else. Like, I needed an adventure. I needed someone else I needed something else. And you know, today he's an amazing father and we're an amazing couple. But I had definitely to catch up with many years, I was just focused on climbing. Not that it was a bad life. Not at all. But I had to realize that most of my friends were around climbing and mostly if my relationship were around the performance are built around a performance. And I needed time to, to build something to feel grounded somewhere to to create a personality, my own personality, out of climbing away from climbing. When I was younger when I was I really love to be like celebrated and loved like, you know, help people they admired me blah blah blah, I don't know. I was cool. It was in my 20s. I was like, Wow, that's great. It matched in that period of time. But when I passed my 30s, I was more and more struggling. Because I felt alone. It was like, I don't need fans. I need friends. I need family, I need something stable.
Kris Hampton 48:19
These can be really hard lessons to learn time consuming lessons to learn. And like it or not, our time is finite. But I think there's a way to reduce the amount of time and energy we put into going down the wrong path only to realize that we maybe should have quit earlier. When we come back. We'll hear from decision strategist Annie Duke about the art and science of better quitting.
Kris Hampton 48:50
Okay, if you're enjoying this remix episode, particularly the fact that it's backed by research, you'll love my other podcast breaking beta science of climate. My co host coach Paul Corsaro. And I take a deep look at the research and sports science that gets applied to climbing, try to tease out what's really happening in the lab. And whether or not it's actually applicable to the real world. We do the hard work for you rather than just wildly extrapolating from some misleading abstract. Don't be fooled by the one off experiments and theories on Instagram, that masquerade as science. Breaking beta, everywhere you get podcasts
Annie Duke 49:39
Whenever you're pursuing something, that means that there's a whole bunch of things that you can't pursue, and all of those other opportunities that you're foregoing have gains and losses associated with them.
Kris Hampton 49:51
This is Annie Duke, former professional poker player and author of the book quit the power of knowing when to walk away. And even though she last cashed entered a poker tournament in 2010. She's still in the top five all time female money winners with over $4 million in winnings. You don't get that good at poker by being bad at decision making.
Annie Duke 50:13
The problem is that when we're pursuing something, we are so focused on the path that we're on, that we actually completely neglect the opportunity costs, what are the things that we could be doing instead, that would make us really happy, or allow us to gain ground toward what those broader goals are. So when we're forced to quit, we now have to go explore all those other opportunities that we've been neglecting in service of pursuing the goal that we've been trying to achieve. Should it take an act of forced quitting, to get us to explore the other options that we have the other opportunities that we might have available in our lives? Or should we be trying to incorporate this type of exploration without the world foisting that necessity upon us.
Kris Hampton 51:05
So we have to take into account the opportunity costs of these big projects or really whatever it is we're doing. Let's look at Erica and Nina's situations, the cost of Erica spending more time on putts pretty dress was that her family had to keep going down there just for her, which means their progression and probably their happiness is limited. She doesn't get to climb on other things that could be more fun for her and possibly lead to more growth. The cost of Nina spending another season training for the nose, and then going back to Yosemite is that it's another year and maybe more, that it will be harder to find stability, cultivate friendships, and start a family. For them, the answer seemed clear after the fact. But when you're in the middle of the situation, it's very difficult to see the other side to keep the broader goals, which may not be all climbing related in mind.
Annie Duke 52:07
There's some pretty deep scientific work, particularly by a wonderful scientist named Barry Starr, that says when we get signals from the world, that the path we're on is not working out that we ought to quit what we're doing, we don't actually pay attention. In fact, when we get those negative signals, we're escalate our commitment to the losing cause. In other words, we'll double down and triple down on the path or the goal that we're trying to pursue, for a variety of reasons, one of which would be we don't want to feel like we wasted our time up until this moment.
Kris Hampton 52:43
What Annie's talking about here is the sunk cost fallacy, the belief that because we've already spent time or money or whatever on something, that it makes more sense to just see it through. That way. We didn't waste our time. But when looking at the sunk costs, we're making a critical error. We're comparing our past selves to our current selves. Instead of asking which choice is better for current and future me. We have to stop calculating how much time we've lost, it's gone, you can't get it back. It's the time you'll be putting in today and tomorrow, that you have to be concerned about. And to decide if spending future time is worth it. We have to then consider the opportunity cost. Easier said than done, of course, and even harder to know when you've crossed the threshold where it makes more sense to quit than it does to continue.
Annie Duke 53:39
Here's the thing if you quit on time, meaning at the objectively right moment, it will feel like you quit too early. Usually.
Kris Hampton 53:46
This concept is illustrated pretty well by a study done by Steven Levitt economist at the University of Chicago and host of the Freakonomics podcast. In this study, people who were facing a tough decision, were asked to flip a digital coin, one side saying stick one side saying change. And to then follow that advice. Over 20,000 people participated many of them with major decisions. 2200 of them considering quitting a job 1700 trying to decide whether or not to end a relationship 1000s More seeking a randomized coin flips advice on having a child going back to school starting a business and more. As you might guess, at the two month mark, many of the people told to change hadn't followed through. But by the six month mark, most of those people had decided that they actually did need the change. And the most surprising result of the study was that the people who followed through with the advice to change were happier felt that they'd made the correct decision and said they do it again, as opposed to other people told to stick with the status quo.
Annie Duke 55:03
This is such great work showing that when we quit on time, it will feel like we're quitting too early. For the reason that by the time we experience, the choice between quitting and sticking as a close call, it's not actually close at all. So by definition, that means that we're really getting to that decision too late, I mean, who's going to flip a coin to make a big life decision except someone who thinks it's a 50/50 choice, they have to by definition, believe that there's likely to be happy staying in their job as quitting their job, there is likely to be happy staying in their relationship as quitting their relationship. So they have to be experiencing this decision as a close call. But no, it wasn't actually close at all. On average, the people who quit were happier. Now, if it were, as they experienced it, and actual close call, then the quitters and stickers would end up equally happy six months later. So what that shows us is that we're just getting to this decision too late, partly because of a lot of the cognitive biases that make it very hard for us to walk away from things. And that's what I think is so beautiful about that work, is that it shows so clearly that our calibration is just way off on this.
Kris Hampton 56:19
So if our calibration for knowing when to quit is so far off, how can we improve our quitting strategies? How can we make sure that we aren't wasting our time that we're allowing ourselves the most valuable opportunities? And how can we be sure that we haven't given up too early?
Annie Duke 56:39
One of the best ways to become better at quitting is to think in advance.
Kris Hampton 56:45
Because when you're deep into trying a project or chasing a goal, when your friends are saying, No, you can't quit, you have to keep going, when you've already spent several seasons trying, it's really hard to notice the signals telling you that it might be time to move on.
Annie Duke 57:02
So if we know that we're not going to pay attention to the signals, one of the things we can do is as much as we possibly can determine those signals in advance. Okay, I'm going to start this thing, let me imagine that things go quite poorly. What are the signals that I'm going to be seeing? That would tell me that I ought to walk away that things aren't going well. And we write down a list of those signals, and we call those kill criteria.
Kris Hampton 57:31
Kill criteria. I love this. And we're already sort of doing it. The checklist that we talked about in the process episode is almost a version of this. But rather than writing the one hang on our list, and then just waiting for it to happen to check it off, what if we said, I need to one hang this by the end of the season, in order to continue working on it? What if we preemptively added a deadline?
Annie Duke 58:02
Yeah, it's what I refer to as states and dates. So the best code criteria contain a state and a date. If I am not in this state, by this date, I must quit. If I am in this state by the state, then I can continue. It's just essentially just the deadline because the deadline could also be if I haven't achieved these particular benchmarks, after having spent a certain amount of money. So that would then basically put a limit on the time as well. So just as you say, you're trying to limit the amount of time that you're in a losing endeavor, for exactly the reason that we lose track of time. Otherwise, it's always right around the corner. And I think this brings up a problem with quitting, which is this interesting asymmetry. Like once we start something, we kind of want to know how it turns out. And this is where we get into this issue, which is that if you want to know how the thing you're doing turns out, the only way to do that is to keep doing it. Richard Thaler a Nobel Laureate in economics. What he said to me is, generally we won't quit until it's no longer a decision.
Kris Hampton 59:17
I think of how that feels for a moment, that you don't even really have a decision anymore. That feels like the F word. Like we've been conditioned to believe that failure and especially quitting is supposed to feel. Winners never quit and quitters never win. If at first you don't succeed, try try again. There are very many inspirational quotes about how important quitting can be. So like Josie said earlier, we hold out for hope. We've already invested all this time we have to have hope. But we need to be sure it isn't Disney hope that we're just blindly following the illusion or delusion that Add enough work will eventually lead to success. Not to mention, we also have to consider whether the work required is actually getting us closer to whatever our broad goals are.
Annie Duke 1:00:13
The reason why kill criteria need to have a date, you need a timestamp a deadline is because as long as there's hope, there's always some chance we can turn it around. And that moment, where we go from failing to having failed is so horrific for us as humans, that we'll just keep going until we're certain that we had no other choice.
Kris Hampton 1:00:42
Now, I don't know about you. But I'd rather not get caught in this cycle if I can avoid it. And I know how insidious the societal and community pressures can be, and how easy it is to tie our worth as athletes to whether we stick to it or not, no matter what. And I can hear some of you now, folks are still thinking and black and white. So which is it? Should we quit or show grit? Well, they aren't opposites, both trades are good. And both can be bad. It's understanding the value of each and when to employ them that we should be aiming for.
Angela Duckworth 1:01:20
Yes, there are absolutely circumstances under which quitting is the right thing to do. And then the real trick here is how do you know which circumstance you're in?
Kris Hampton 1:01:31
That psychologist and scientist Angela Duckworth. She literally wrote the book on sticking to it. It's called Grit, the power of passion and perseverance.
Angela Duckworth 1:01:42
So I think the crux of it is opportunity costs, which you alluded to, at any given point in time. There's what you're doing. And there's everything else that you're not doing, because you're doing what you're doing. The trick will be, can I figure out whether I'm in a circumstance where there's a road not taken, that's just better, it's smoother? It gets me where I want to go faster, it's more pleasant. And I think the reason why there are all these aphorisms about not giving up and maybe why so much of my research has focused on the psychology of staying the course, is that sometimes the road not taken the track that you want to switch to is appealing, not because it is objectively better, but because it's objectively easier, just in the short run.
Kris Hampton 1:02:29
Do you feel attacked? That's because we're talking to you. Many of us very often, like I mentioned on road trips, give up on the harder thing, just because it's harder, not because the opportunity cost is too great. Not because there's a better option, just because there's something easier. And if that's the reason, then quitting can be a bad thing. But what if it's a toss up? What if you're on the fence? Should we literally just flip a coin like the study did?
Angela Duckworth 1:03:02
I think that's what Danny Kahneman and maybe some other judgment and decision making experts say they say, flip your own coin. And really the telling thing is how do you feel when you see that it came up heads? And if you're like, oh, no, I'm gonna keep flipping the coin until I get tails, then that tells you something, my guess is that some people know what they want to do, but they need the courage to do it. And other people are really indecisive. They just don't know whether it's the right thing to do for them to quit or to stay the course.
Kris Hampton 1:03:34
So it's not the coin flip. It's how you feel about the result. But it has to be an honest feeling. It can't be colored by how you think people will judge you. Again, easier said than done. And we know there's a fair amount of science singing the praises of being gritty. But is there another side to that story?
Angela Duckworth 1:03:54
There was a study of gritty people. This was a study that was done in a lab, participants came in and they took the grit scale. And so the scientists could with some precision, say who was grittier and who was less gritty. And then they gave them a series of unsolvable anagrams. And the trick in this study was that the unsolvable anagrams are kind of mixed up with just really, really hard anagrams and you couldn't in this experiment, pass and keep going. Or you could stick with one puzzle and just work on it to your heart's content. And the grittier people in this study tended to perseverate on the impossible anagrams far past the point where it was advantageous. Of course, it wasn't advantageous, they were impossible.
Kris Hampton 1:04:39
Perseverate. That's your Word of the Day. I didn't even know we had a word for this, but I love it, for several reasons.
Angela Duckworth 1:04:46
Perseverate is interesting because it has a clinical definition. It basically means when you persevere in a maladaptive way. So perseverance sounds good. It sounds good when you call it endurance, but it sounds bad when you call it stubbornness and perseveration is essentially a sticking with things when it's bad for you.
Kris Hampton 1:05:04
Are you perseverating on some project right now some goal you set years ago and your life was different, but now you feel like you have to keep going and just get the fucking thing done. Because that's what everyone expects. Did you decide you wanted to try some random thing your friend was trying and then got totally wrapped up in it, even though it has nothing to do with your actual goals? And here you are three years later still working on it? Or do you have big goals challenging goals, but then they feel so hard and unattainable that you can't even get started? Well, I think we can improve all of these scenarios, and more by practicing quitting by getting more comfortable in the face of potential failure. When we come back, we'll look at some strategies we can use to get better at reaching our goals. By embracing the F word.
Kris Hampton 1:06:06
Sport climbing season is coming fast, got an emesis route you need to clip chains on. For over a decade, we've helped climbers prepare for their goals, we've seen patterns emerge showing what's most effective for each level of climber. Those patterns became our proven plans, a training system that you can follow from complete beginner to 5.14 and beyond, with workouts geared toward your goals and focused on improving not only strength and power, but tactics and mindset as well. Each proven plan comes with a built in group chat and an option to work directly with one of our coaches. We don't believe in a one size fits all approach to climbing. You shouldn't either.
Kris Hampton 1:06:49
It's the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Audio Clip 1:06:54
And it is Michael Phelps going for his 10th career Olympic gold medal. In the men's 200 fly you have a chance to witness rare history live here in Beijing. Phelps already with 11 career Olympic medals. Nine of them gold he's the big favorite in this event, the world record holder we expect not only the gold, but again Phelps to continue a string of perfect races as far as world records go, which would separate him from everybody else as the most decorated gold medalist in Olympic history. He's got the second position right now behind Burmester of New Zealand in lane one. But Phelps in that controlled manner, just gliding across the water. Yeah you're exactly right. That's what it looks like.
Kris Hampton 1:07:52
What we can't see here is that as soon as the race began one of the highest pressure races of his career, the goggles Phelps is wearing began to fill the water. By the first turn. He was swimming blind. This could easily like it did for Giannis become a cataclysmic failure.
Shannon Sharpe 1:08:14
failure, failure, failure, failure
Audio Clip 1:08:17
just ahead of the world record right now getting a little pressure from Grandmaster down on the bottom of the screen in lane one, but he's got the clear lead right now.
Kris Hampton 1:08:27
But it doesn't
Audio Clip 1:08:30
15 meters left for Michael Phelps. Career Olympic gold medal number 10 in his sights, he's gonna stand alone and Olympic history. Is it gonna be a world record? Yes! The greatest Olympic champion of all time tosses the goggles on the deck.
Kris Hampton 1:08:56
So why didn't this result in failure? Because, like I suggested that maybe we should do back in the effort episode. Phelps had practiced for things going wrong. He'd later say that his coach Bob Bowman, would just before the start of a race, rip his goggles off, so he'd have to swim without them. He'd color in his only pair of goggles with black Sharpie. He'd added constraints to the practice that created failure opportunities. Yes, I said failure opportunities, so that when it was happening at the worst possible time, rather than panic, Phelps could calm down, count his strokes and still break the world record, both for that race and for the most Olympic gold medals ever won. In fact, a 2015 study titled What doesn't kill me, showed that one of the things that separates the Olympic champions from other athletes is that they've faced more adversity, more failure, and specifically more significant failure. These athletes describe what we all do what Brian Antheunisse said at the top of this episode,
Brian Antheunisse 1:10:14
and it gave me exactly what I needed, which was the psyche and the motivation to put forth the effort.
Kris Hampton 1:10:19
And so I think we should fail more, quit more, and practice in training, put ourselves in positions more often, where we might not be able to do it, and then have to walk away with nothing to show for it. Because if we get comfortable there, I think we open ourselves up to dreaming bigger, and maybe most important, trying bigger, committing bigger in the face of potential failure. And the way I see it, we can go about this in two different ways. One more general, one more specific. Let's start General. First, let's normalize saying that we failed or quit, and learned lessons. Failing or quitting isn't bad. So let's stop treating it that way. And when you're in training, or practice, whether in the gym or outdoors, we can do just like I suggested back in that effort episode, purposely add pressurized situations, just with a new layer, a deadline. So let's say you want to do a few second or third tier routes to start your season and build momentum. The things that usually take maybe four to five attempts, well, give yourself three attempts. And then you don't get to get on it again that season. Either you give bigger, better effort while likely making mistakes, or you have to walk away or in the gym. What if you try something like a 10 minute takedown on something challenging, that looks really fun. But if you don't send you walk away, you never get to try it again, ever. And once in a while on a road trip, go all in on a big goal, even if it means coming home empty handed. onside attempts which we should absolutely be practicing even if our main goals are in red pointing might be our closest analogue to the win loss paradigm most sports regularly practice. The difference though is that we get to go back and finish the thing. But what if you don't give yourself a moratorium on Cite it or no more attempts until whenever one season two seasons never make it uncomfortable. It's not a coincidence that the most successful climber in the world has also been very public about difficult onside attempts, including some highly publicized failed onsight attempts.
Adam Ondra 1:13:04
Fuck! It's fucking 100 million degrees. No! Fuck!
Kris Hampton 1:13:13
To be honest, I'm just always looking for another reason to use that clip. But let's get back to this. Now, I'm not saying we should do this all the time. We aren't trying to accept failing with no fight, you still have to care about these things like Yanis did in that press conference. But we have to be comfortable enough with the prospect of failing that we're willing to try really hard things. Michael Jordan said that he was trusted 26 times to take the game winning shot and missed. He wasn't given the ball because he was the best basketball player ever. That came later. It was because he wasn't afraid to take those shots. You can't make them if you won't take them. See, many of us are searching for that line between possible and impossible. We want to know where our limits lie. But we can't know that until we've gone all in and failed until we've crossed the line. So a timer to in early season just before a trip with big goals may be more frequently when you're in the gym, practice, failing, practice walking away. And now let's get more specific. There's absolutely value in sticking to a project when it's hard, but we have to know when to grit and when to quit. And like Annie Duke said,
Annie Duke 1:14:43
one of the best ways to become better at quitting is to think in advance.
Kris Hampton 1:14:48
Because once we're deep into these projects, it's much harder to see things from any other perspective. So number one, you have to have a clear goal. All, because like Jeremy Fein said.
Jeremy Fein 1:15:02
So to me, failure is always goal dependent. You can only fail if there's some sort of like predefined context for what success would be.
Kris Hampton 1:15:14
So in my opinion, if you aren't defining that success, then you're avoiding failure, you're already letting yourself off the hook. And that goes for seasons, road trips, even individual attempts, it all needs to start with a goal. And we have to do that up front. The goal of early attempts can be to learn, but when it comes time for the goal to be to send, you have to act like it, or you risk leaving your process to look waiting for things to go perfectly, not giving high effort and avoiding the specter of failure. Let's just see what happens is akin to hope. And like I said, hope is not a strategy. Josie McKee,
Josie McKee 1:16:02
we need to be more honest with ourselves about what our goals are. So that fear of failure is not a block in our performance,
Kris Hampton 1:16:12
and choose that goal and be solid about it, you have to know your why. And I'm not going to go too deep into goal setting here, you'd be here for another hour. But suffice it to say, some y's are more flimsy than others. Ideally, this project you're choosing also connects to some other larger goal of improvement. And it's not just for the number or to feed your ego. Because I promise you, as soon as that gets hard, you're gone for all the wrong reasons. And then, like we discussed in the process episode, your goal has sub goals, when you create a checklist for those that helps you remain focused on the process while still caring about the outcome. And by definition, since this is a big goal that could potentially be quite long term. Otherwise, you aren't going to have much reason to consider whether or not to quit, then it's going to require big effort. But giving big effort doesn't mean that we pursue every. There's that word of the day for you. Now, when you're making this checklist, the checkpoints that let you know you're on the right track, when combined with a state and date, are also your kill criteria. If I haven't done all of the moves within four sessions, I'm out. Or if I haven't done it in two overlapping links, by the end of this season, I'm walking. Or if I haven't been able to commit to the easy but scary top out in isolation by the end of this month, the opportunity cost is too great. And I quit. You're going to have to think critically about this and about how to apply kill criteria to your projects. But it could make the difference between continuing to bang your head against an impossible project, like the people in the anagram study, per separating, and moving on to something that will continue to improve your skills. Because look, we've all experienced the phenomenon of spending months or years to send your hardest thing. But then you feel terrible on damn near everything else. If you're stuck on one thing, if you can't travel, because you'll be wasting time you could be spending on the project. If you're always only training specifically for that one route or boulder, then you're not only losing fitness and partners, but you're losing adaptability. And when it comes to climbing a lot of things, particularly a lot of hard things. Adaptability might be the most important component of climbing. Even more important than your precious finger strength. I said what I said
Kris Hampton 1:19:11
Speaking of adaptability, let's be flexible here. Some projects take time. That's okay. Maybe that project is literally the only rock climb you care about doing. That's also okay. And to retain that flexibility we have to reflect and reassess regularly, lives change quickly new opportunities arise. Whether you've met your kill criteria or not regularly interrogate your why it may not apply anymore, or it may be even more important that you get this thing done. Consider whether this project is continuing to move you towards your goal. Or if there's something else that would serve you better. You do not have to stick to it just because you've already put time in.
Kris Hampton 1:20:08
what makes you so sure you won't go back to the nose?
Nina Caprez 1:20:12
It is weird, like the real purpose for that route. You know, I couldn't really say any more after the first year, if I really wanted to try it for its beauty for its adventure for its experience. I think I really wanted to try it because I wanted to do like Lynn. And I wanted to have it done. And I wanted to be celebrated for that thing, you know, gather somehow, like, sometimes like, come on, climb The Nose, and then you can move on, you can do something else, right. But I think if I would have climbed the nose, it would have been impossible to move on.
Erica Lineberry 1:20:57
Endless is one of my favorite places to climb. And I hiked that cliff and I look up at certain routes, and it's like, oh, yeah, it feels like I'm hanging out with an old friend again. Like, oh, I remember how I felt on this. And I remember what it felt like when I said, you know, I mean, we personify these rock faces.
Kris Hampton 1:21:15
Yeah. When you walk past Pudd's do you look up at it? With a smile? Do you turn your head away and not look up at it at all? What's that look like?
Erica Lineberry 1:21:28
So I have yet to walk by it. But I would anticipate that No, I'm not I'm not gonna look away because I don't feel ashamed walking away, you know, I will stand proud and eye contact face to face.
Nina Caprez 1:21:41
I think it just changed me in a really beautiful way. And I feel very, very grateful actually, how things turn out and, and you know, it took me a while to make room for new stuff and but ever, really, every time when I had doubts, and I was hesitating, I just tried to, to close my eyes and to trust life and to let go and
Kris Hampton 1:22:11
what do you think, Or what do you hope your kids take away from watching you try this thing for so long, and then ultimately, walk away from it without doing it?
Erica Lineberry 1:22:23
I think if you would have asked me that a couple of seasons ago, I would have been all in on. I want to teach my kids perseverance like you don't give up and you keep coming back and you get knocked down and you keep trying again. And absolutely Those are great lessons to teach your kids. At this point, though, I would say hey, there's also value in being able to separate just like your selfworth as a person from this piece of rock. You know, maybe maybe a few years from now when my son is ready to do that. I'll take a toprope on it, you know, see how it goes.
Nina Caprez 1:23:06
Seriously, there's no regret.
Kris Hampton 1:23:13
Sometimes, you have to close one door in order to open others. At the link in your show notes, you'll find a full transcript of this episode, videos of the pianist press conference and Michael Phelps swimming blindly to a new world record and citations for all of the studies mentioned. You'll also find links to learn more about all of our guests and to check out Quit from Annie Duke and Grit from Angela Duckworth. Special Special thanks to Jeremy Fein and Josie McKee for letting me bounce ideas off of them. And to Erica Lineberry and Nina Caprez for taking the time to tell us their stories. Our patrons and Apple subscribers who already get two bonus episodes every month will be getting the full versions of all four of those conversations. You can too for as little as $3 remix is brought to you by power company climbing.com. Remember, hard things are hard, but like the great philosopher Kenny Rogers once said, You've got to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em.
