Knowing When to Stop: 3 Things Worth Stealing From an Ant

In 1971, a temp agency ran a print ad for the perfect worker. She never took a vacation. Never asked for a raise. Never got sick. Never stopped. They called her the Never-Never Girl.

Nobody prints that ad anymore. We just say it about each other. Reliable. Committed. Always steps up. But knowing when to stop can be just as important.

This episode starts with a nearly finished episode of this show going in the bin, and then four nights of going back at it, a genuinely new idea every time, and nothing that survived. Every attempt felt like resourcefulness. None of it was.

The question underneath it is knowing when to stop, when the only person available to make that call is the one who's been at it for four nights?

The red harvester ant is the mascot for never stopping - the fable, the kitchen bench, busy as an ant, and she spends most of her time at home. On a hot dry day, with seeds sitting on the ground and nothing in her way, she stays in, because going out costs her more water than she'd bring back.

After forty years watching these colonies, Gordon found something stranger still: nobody makes that decision. There is no ant in charge. The colony speeds up and slows down all day on the rate of what's coming back, and not one individual ever decides anything.

Which means the ant isn't better at stopping. She's simply never asked. There's no moment in her life where she has to talk herself out of one more go.

This episode is about what that changes - why "can I do this?" is always answered yes and therefore stops nothing, why the colonies that pulled back hardest in a drought produced the most descendants, and the difference between stopping a go and stopping the goal.

Three worth stealing: find your signal, check the conditions, and know what a stop actually means.

Nothing out there has to be strong at midnight. Which is lucky.

Nature owns the patent. We get to copy it.

Biology: Red harvester ant colonies regulate foraging by the rate at which foragers return with seeds - no central control, no individual decision. On hot, dry days they forage less, because being out costs water that only returning seeds replace.

Principle: Effort is set by what comes back and what the conditions cost. Never by how hard the individual is trying.

Application: Knowing when to stop is about decision-making, not willpower. The signal that it’s time to stop is often already there and being ignored, because stopping can feel like giving up on the whole goal. Check the conditions before you start, notice when effort is no longer producing a useful return, and let one attempt end without abandoning the ambition.

Enjoyed this? Try Feral by Design Season 2: Too Fast To Think: The Sloth Strategy For Better Decisions - another episode about why doing less can be the winning move.

S3E04

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Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

She never takes a vacation, never asks for a raise, never gets tired, never slows down. Introducing the Never Never Girl. She'll never let you down because she never ever stops.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

That was inspired by True Events. In 1971, there was a print ad campaign for a temp services agency. The Dream Worker. No stopping her, sold as the feature. They called her the Never Never Girl. And we're still running that ad. We just don't print it anymore. We say it about our friends and our colleagues. Reliable, committed, always steps up, never lets us down. We hand them a mug that says, She believed she could, so she did. And then sometimes we watch her go under. I'm Pia, and this is Feral by Design. If you've ever gone back at something, fourth night running, one more version, oh one more draft, one more go, because stopping now would feel too much like giving up, this episode's for you. Especially if you've thought, oh I'm nearly there. And in hindsight, you absolutely weren't. Because there's an aunt that spends most of her time at home, and she has a much better way of knowing when to go at something again than I do, and maybe we do. Anyway, my issue was a fortnight ago. I threw away a full episode of this show, and I lost days of my life. I had been at this thing four days. Around the day job, of course, late, nights, the way you do. And then a niggle that wouldn't let go made me fact check something one more time, the afternoon before I was due to publish, and it took the whole argument out from under it. The whole lot. So I sat down again and I had another go. New angle. That didn't work either. So I had another go and another. And the last one ran to about one in the morning. Stupid o'clock. In case you're interested, a puffin episode. Roz, if you're listening, it will come back, I promise. I just need to heal. Every one of those attempts felt completely reasonable because every one was genuinely a new idea. But that's the trick of it. It doesn't feel like you're flogging a dead horse. It feels like resourcefulness. But by the end, my ears were ringing. I couldn't type, and I was swearing to all bejesus at my MacBook. And nothing I produced across those days has survived. Now I'm well aware I lost a podcast episode is not a universal human tragedy. I do get that. But there are so many versions of this. The client thing that you rewrite four times in one day. The deck out the back that you've been working on for three weekends and you're still out there after dark trying to get the job done. The bloody bunnings or IKEA flat packs, or even the job you kept applying for. Same shape. You keep going and you can't tell from the inside whether keeping going is grit and tenacity, or whether it's just momentum wearing grits jumper. That's what I went looking for, because we treat tenacity as virtue, and virtues don't come with a stop switch. So ants You already know this ant. She's the one on your kitchen bench at six in the morning, or the ones that my neighbours and I see trailing across our walls and somehow miraculously through the windows and out the other side. She's the fable the ant works all summer while the grasshopper mucks about. Worker ant, army of ants. She's the mascot for never stopping. Except red harvester ants that live in the Arizona Desert. They collect seeds as food. And on a hot, dry day, when the seeds are right there, they're available, they're just outside, and nothing is stopping her. She stays in. And it's not just her. Most days, most of the colony isn't out there. The nest is quiet, and it's meant to be. The great tireless worker of Western civilization, home more than she's out. Because going out costs her water. She loses it just by being out in the blistering heat, and she only gets it back from the seeds she brings home. So going out on the wrong day, and you spend more than you collect. And here's the twist as well: nobody's making that decision. There's no boss ant. Deborah Gordon, a biologist, has been watching these colonies for 40 years. And the finding that made her famous is that there's nobody in charge. The queen isn't managing anyone. She's busy laying eggs. What actually happens is this: an ant goes out. She finds a seed, she comes back with it. And yes, always she. The males don't work. They mate and die. Different episode. Anyway. The ant goes out. If she finds a seed, she comes back with it. And an ant waiting inside the entrance bumps antennae with the ones coming back. Seeds arriving fast, lots of bumps. Out she goes. Seeds arriving slowly, hardly any antenna bumps. She stays where she is. That's it. That's the whole system. The colony speeds up and slows down all day, and not one ant ever decides anything. Which means when the desert goes quiet, the colony goes quiet. Nobody sat in the dark after midnight talking themselves into having just one more go. The colony's effort is set by what's coming back and what the day costs. It's never set by how hard anyone's trying. And that's the whole idea. There's no moment in an ant's life where she has to talk herself out of one more go. I have that moment on night four, in the dark, on my own by the least reliable version of me available. So three things that we steal here, or shall I say harvest. First one, find your signal. The ant doesn't check anything. She doesn't decide to go and look. The information hits her physically. Other ants bumping into her whether she wants it or not. And here's the thing that I got wrong when I first started trying to apply this into an application for us. I went looking for ways to measure my night, right? Classic. Systems, tracking, can't help myself. Little marks on paper. Genuine rubbish, all of it. Because it needed me to be organized at exactly the time and state that I'm least organized. I already had the signal, and so do you. Mine is physical and it's not subtle. Ears ringing, tolerance falls through the floor, brain fog from hell. I can barely remember the sentence I've just typed. I can't type. I'm swearing at an inanimate object. This shit gets real. Yours might be reading the same paragraph four times, or the fridge, opening it, nothing in there, opening it again, or getting short with someone over something completely reasonable. And having that little half second of oh, that's not them. That's petulant me coming to the fore. You know yours. Make it a threshold. Something you hold yourself to later. You've had it for years, you've just never said it out loud, so it turns up and doesn't count as information, just more an annoyance. And out loud matters for this tip. I've learnt that if I'm actually going to stick to something, it helps to out myself, if you like, to someone. A witness. It keeps me a bit more honest. So say it ideally to someone, but if not, in the car, in the shower, just on a normal day, when you're fine and you're not in the thick of it. Left unsaid, it's a mood. Said out loud, it's a reading. Here's the second tip. Check the conditions. When I look at a piece of work, I usually ask, okay, can I do this? How big is it? When's it due? Who's waiting? And here's the trouble with starting with that. If you're a capable kind of person, the answer to can I is pretty much always yes, isn't it? So the question itself never actually stops anything. The aunt asks a different question. Not can I do this, but what's it like out there today? So for us, that is what are the conditions I'm starting this in? Because you never start the day empty, do you? There's the kids who need you before breakfast, or the parent who needs more than they used to, the volunteering you might do on the side, the sports roster nobody else will take, I don't know. The team at work that routes everything through you because you're the one who answers. None of that is the job you're about to start, but all of it is the conditions you're starting in. Now the heat is just the heat. The aunt doesn't have to be honest with herself about it. She doesn't have to catch it early or admit anything, or be any good at noticing. It's a fact about the day sitting right there before she goes. So read yours the same way, as facts before you start. What are the conditions you're starting in? Four hours sleep, I've been fielding people's stuff all day, there's an early sports practice school run or something in the morning, and this is the fourth night in a row, that kind of thing. That's a forecast. Same quick question every time you go again or pick something back up. Because the days conditions change, don't they? Which is exactly where my week falls apart. Four goes, four new ideas, and every single one of them went out into precisely the same conditions. If you genuinely can't stop, which is often the case and I get it, at least don't go back out into the same conditions. Change something. Less of it. Later, someone else, or go in the morning when it's cooler, ant style. Which is, now I think about it, exactly what we mean by cooler heads. Third and final tip stop the go, not the goal. Here's why I override that signal, even when I feel it, and I suspect you might do it too sometimes. Because stopping doesn't feel like not tonight. It feels more like I've failed, like you've given up, like you're the sort of person who gives up. And nothing in that desert believes that. The ant who stays in hasn't given up on foraging, and it's no assault on her character. She's not a bad ant because she's not foraging today. Nobody's disappointed in her. It's just too hot. It's not worth the water. That's it. Stopping ends this go, this turn. It's not a verdict on the whole goal. So when your thing arrives, whether it's your ears ringing and the fog or what do we say, the fourth read of the same paragraph? It doesn't mean that the work is beyond you. It's not an assessment of your character and your capability. It means this go is finished, and that's a fact about today. I'd have got there faster if I'd known that. The four goes weren't tenacity. They were me trying not to be the sort of person who stops. And I know what you're thinking? Because I thought it, if I stop, I'll fall behind. I was already behind. So I was trying to make up. Right, so Gordon's team watched these colonies through a drought, and some colonies pulled back hard. They sent fewer ants out, stayed in, waited. Others kept sending everyone out into the heat. The restrained ones produced more offspring colonies, more descendants. They grew. Doing less was their winning move. With one caveat, and it's a fair one, in a good year, aggressive foraging pays. For sure. There's no medal for staying in when it's mild outside. This is not a license to knock off. Hello. It's what to do when the conditions are genuinely against you and you can't tell anymore. So there we have it. A tasting plate. Harvested, couldn't resist, for your pleasure. Find your signal, check the conditions, and when either one says stop, it's just the end of that go. It's not the end of the goal. None of that needs you to be strong on night four at midnight, pumpkin o'clock. Which is lucky because I'm not.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Today's episode brought to you by the Harvester Ant. Never takes a vacation, never asks for a raise.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

She never quits. She just doesn't always start. And that's Feral by Design. Nature owns the patent, we get to copy it.