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Mariuslol Norway. Jun 29 2012 09:48. Posts 4742 | | |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs
Sunken Cost Bias
A thinking tarp
Slows down personal improvement
Can easily make people waste their whole lives on
What is it?
Something that you've already spent and that you won't get back, regardless of future outcomes.
Some examples
Bad overall life decisions:
Persisting on an unfulfilled job or career, just because you invested so much time in it? Persisting on a bad relationship, just to “make all those years worth it”? (Maybe some of the saddest cases of the sunk cost effect). Since people literally waste years – if not their whole lives because of it.
Bad financial decisions:
Refusing to sell something at a reasonable price, just because they spent so much money on it. Gamblers who won't quit, claiming they need to make back the money they've already lost.
Bad Everyday Decisions:
Ordered too much food, eat it anyway despite being full. Keeping useless clutter in your home, since you payed for it. Watching a bad movie to the end lol. The examples go on and on. The consequences for each of them may seem trivial at first, but if you think about it, we make these mistakes so often that they add up pretty quickly.
Why Do We Fall Into the Tarp and How to Avoid It
1. We Want to Make the Investment Worth Our While
“We have a genuine interest in making our efforts worth our while”. We don't want to feel that we spent anything in vain – time, money, anything. However, even if we know deep inside that our approach is wrong, we still have trouble abandoning it.
Solution
Cut your losses and move on! (LOL, ok, kinda anti climatic, but whatever works I guess).
2. We Fear Failing and Looking Foolish
We live in a success-oriented culture. Cutting losses means admitting you made a mistake, if not in public, at least to yourself. Our egos will always try stubbornly holding us to your commitments, so we don't need to admit our imperfections. If you made a public commitment, you're even less likely to break it, as there will probably be a lot of explaining to do. (That's one thing I got going for me, I don't go out much, so dun have to hassle with that haha).
Solution
Allow yourself to make mistakes. Quickly admitting your mistakes is really productive and more awesome than trying to “save face”.
Do like Socrates and think differently, become proud of admitting your errors (haha, poor longple, who doesn't make mistakes). Change your attitude from hiding your mistakes to actively exposing them. (This is actually sick advice, I always feel a warm wind when I do this in front of people, but it wasn't consciously, I just suddenly felt like it).
This might make you feel defenseless and uneasy at first, but once you get used to it, you'll feel invulnerable to harsh criticism.
Instead of focusing on the sunk costs, take pride in recognizing the cost associated with sticking to the old approach.
3. We Become Attached to Our Commitments
After we decide to do something, we feel attached to what we committed to. And the bigger the commitment, the harder it is to let go. Plus that it's a human trait to be overconfident in everything we set ourselves to do will pay off. We're biased when we evaluate the probability of success of already-made commitments. (This is known as overly optimistic probability bias).
Solution
Be aware of the natural bias, evaluate the status quo as it was just another option, rather than the frontrunner.
Try your best, detaching yourself emotionally from past decisions.
“Zero-based thinking”. Forget about the past, and consider this very moment as your “point-zero” in time. Act like all you have in the present. (Cool trick is to pretend you've just woken from amnesia, or a really, really bad hangover). This helps focusing on your current situation, instead of clinging to past decisions that would drag you down.
4. We Lose Sight of Our Underlying Goals
Get too preoccupied by how much time and effort we put into something, that we lose sight of it's relevance in the greater scheme of things. We become attached to the means and forget about the ends.
Solution
Always mindful of long-term objectives. Don't get caught up in justifying your current actions.
Let Go of the Past, Move On
Greatest example of sunk cost is that you pay with your own time, can't really reclaim that time. So no point clinging to the past, make the most of your life right now.
Notes gathered from Luciano Passuello's work
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Mariuslol Norway. Jun 29 2012 10:14. Posts 4742 | | |
If anyone's wondering what the "overly optimistic probability bias is". I can explain it here briefly.
Pretend you're in the MMA thread, and you've decided to make some bets. While you're contemplating which bets to make, and then kinda figured out what to bet and on who, right before you place your bet, if you get asked how certain you are on your bets, that answer will be more optimistic if we were to ask you right after you've placed your bets.
Maybe explained a lot better if you google it, and check out wikipedia xD
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dnagardi Hungary. Jun 29 2012 11:57. Posts 1776 | | | |
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Trolala Estonia. Jun 29 2012 12:40. Posts 2050 | | |
it also has been named "asset love". Imo these words are more intuitive to describe it. |
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goose58 United States. Jun 29 2012 13:22. Posts 871 | | | |
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Mariuslol Norway. Jun 29 2012 13:48. Posts 4742 | | |
| | On June 29 2012 11:40 Trolala wrote:
it also has been named "asset love". Imo these words are more intuitive to describe it. |
Ouuh, interesting, love that shit. One of my newfound hobbies is looking up words I don't fully understand xD
Tried googling it, but only companies and stuff like that came up. Normally when I type in words the first page is filled with wiktionary, defenition pages, wikipedia and such. Weird!! If you have a link, feel free to post. |
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cariadon Estonia. Jun 29 2012 17:17. Posts 4019 | | |
Looks like having quit wanking you are left with a lot of time on your hands.
edited a typo |
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Mariuslol Norway. Jun 29 2012 18:46. Posts 4742 | | |
You must still be wanking, still acting a bit like a douche, but that's okay. I accept everyone in here.
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bigredhoss Cook Islands. Jun 29 2012 19:47. Posts 8648 | | |
wouldn't still wanking make him less likely to be a douche, by relieving stress and whatnot? |
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Mariuslol Norway. Jun 29 2012 20:50. Posts 4742 | | | |
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RaiNKhAN  United States. Jun 29 2012 21:13. Posts 4080 | | |
Marius what are you currently working on in life right now in relation to all these self-improvement threads. These things don't just spawn out of no where, please elaborate |
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| The biggest Rockets, Sixers, and Grizzlies fan you will ever meet! | |
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whamm! Albania. Jun 29 2012 22:51. Posts 11625 | | |
i am guilty of this. good read. |
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Mariuslol Norway. Jun 30 2012 08:18. Posts 4742 | | |
| | On June 29 2012 20:13 RaiNKhAN wrote:
Marius what are you currently working on in life right now in relation to all these self-improvement threads. These things don't just spawn out of no where, please elaborate |
Searching for another passion, if I don't read or write I get depressed. So I do it. This thread here, is one of the 5 I wrote yesterday. I think I read or studied 8-9 hours yesterday.
It's kind of like playing Diablo, you just do it, you don't do it in relation to anything, just do it because it's fun.
I've been playing games for most of my life, came to a point I felt pretty stupid, so decided to start reading or writing more. So tried reading all kinds of books, but I find reading stuff about self-improvement, body language, nlp, universe, stuff similiar in nature, or close to these to be the most fun, and rewarding. (I do indulge in other stuff, but then, oh my, lol, I'd get flamed to bits. I like educational youtube video's, but if I were to write about that, people might just get annoyed, because many of those facts are like, uhm, the stuff you find on Wikipedia. Blabla, 5% of the Ocean is explored, blabla, put 200 really tall buildings from New York on top of eachother, and that's the average depth of the water, blablabla, each time they go down really deep, they find new species, blablabla, there's an octopus down there which got two ninja eyes that glow in the dark at it's back, so it seems he's charging you, but he's actually legging it lol, blabla, so forth, you get the picture).
I do want to sleep, my focus. I always wake 15-20 times a night, can't seem to find the answer quite yet. So I read, maybe I will stumble on something.
When I saw your question I went "hmm", then I looked up to the right, then left, then another hmm, then small shrug with the shoulders. So might just be making up an answer, since I'm not really sure lol. |
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RaiNKhAN United States. Jun 30 2012 13:37. Posts 4080 | | |
That's a lot of reading/writing man. I think I've read like three books in my life, tops
Maybe if you combine Diablo and all the reading/writing you do into a Science Fiction novel and make some money. gl with it |
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| The biggest Rockets, Sixers, and Grizzlies fan you will ever meet! | |
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