Liberat.es
Sunk cost
I wrote a 1000 word blog post for my business and decided to throw it away. Why? Because by the time it’d been edited and then edited again, it was dead. It was not simply dead, it had decayed. Sure, it had some nuggets in it. But those nuggets felt stale and irrelevant. The whole thing read like a disjointed, inauthentic mess. And, no, I’m not simply being hard on myself. I’m just being honest.
There’s this thing called the sunk cost fallacy. This is what the Google had to say about it:
The Sunk Cost Fallacy. The Misconception: You make rational decisions based on the future value of objects, investments and experiences. The Truth: Your decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it. Actually, this came from this website
I’d spent a bunch of time on this post. I edited it. I sent it to my colleague for her input, she edited. I worked on it some more. I’d invested a bunch of time. But it was time to let it go.
Honestly, I’m not sure what I’ll replace it with. I’ll have to see what’s next. I did learn what it’s like to over edit something, that’s for sure. Who says there’s no return on this kind of investment?