When saying It's over is harder than beginning

We all have had those activities which we once loved and thought as productive to later find that things changed and what we considered as good was, in reality, damaging our progress. These are most commonly seem when playing certain games for excessive amounts of time or using medication, where the benefits get decreased little by little and the amount of input required to get them increases considerably. However, the particular problem with this kind of practices is that we usually don't leave them even when we know that they are doing us bad, all because of the time and resources invested in It. This is what is known as The Sunk Cost Fallacy or Sunk Cost Bias, thing of which I'll talk about in this article to tell you why and when It's time to say goodbye to what doesn't serve you anymore, so you can grow further in your journey to overall well-being. Let's begin:

The Sunk Cost Fallacy:

As I've pointed previously, the Sunken Cost Fallacy is what describes our tendency to keep performing an endeavor even If the costs outweigh the benefits, all because of the effort, time and resources that were already compromised doing It. Examples of these can be seem commonly in our day to day life, such as when we decide to finish a boring movie because we did already pay for the tickets.

A representation of this effect in a higher scale scenario can be seen in the Concorde fallacy, where, in 1956, the British and French governments invested in the development of a new supersonic airplane, called the concorde, with an initial budget for the project of a 100 million dollars. However, as the project went on, It became more and more expensive to the point where It wasn't profitable anymore. Even after these projections, both nations decided to keep funding the project. 30 years later, the Concorde was retired due to the unprofitability of the aircraft.

How can we avoid the Sunken Cost Fallacy?:

Due to the fact this bias relies in your unrealistic vision of loss and sacrifice, there are a number of tips you can apply to avoid falling prey to the sunken cost fallacy again. Between these we can find:

Choose your words carefully

You might think that designating a particular activity with a set of words that's emotionally charged won't affect the way in which you see It. However, this is far from the truth. When you assign terms like investment, loss or value to a situation, you'll find that your attachment to that task will be much greater than If you just look at It in concrete and objective words. That's why you should speak about the things you perform in an objective manner, so you can move on If things go wrong.

Evaluate the pros and the cons.

Sometimes being rational is much harder than we would like to admit. Maybe It is that you can get yourself to focus on what's really happening or you might be in a state of denial. What you can do about this is to create physical records whenever you're trying to evaluate options, all so you can recognize If the pros outweights the cons when It comes to keep doing something.

Forget what you have already spent

The best thing you can do when you know that there's no turning back to the way things used to be is to forget voluntarily, just seeing the future and how doing the same thing will compromise It. If you have spent a lot of money on something that didn't go well It is the best to pick up on the lesson, take the rest of your mind and keep going forward than to just whine and try to make It work pointlessly.

I hope that this article could have been of use to you, providing you with information about a common bias that most of us know very little about, telling you about some examples to recognize It better and some strategies you can apply to get rid of the curse of the Sunk Cost Bias, understanding when is time to leave. Thank you for your support and good luck!