Why you should forget the past

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a bad situation, simply because you had already invested a lot of time, money or effort into it?

Maybe it was a project that wasn’t going well, but you kept pushing forward because you had already invested so much into it.

Or perhaps it was a relationship that wasn’t working out, but you stayed in it because you had already spent years together.

These are examples of the sunk cost fallacy, a cognitive bias that can lead us to make irrational decisions based on our past investments, rather than looking at the current situation objectively.

Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash

The sunk cost fallacy can impact our daily lives in many ways.

For example, imagine you buy a movie ticket for a film that you’ve been looking forward to watching for weeks. However, 20 minutes into the movie, you realize that it’s not what you were expecting and that you’re not enjoying it. But instead of leaving and doing something else, you stay in the theatre and finish the movie because you don’t want to waste the money you spent on the ticket. This is an example of the sunk cost fallacy.

But continuing to invest in something that’s not working out can actually be more costly in the long run…