The Zen of Sinking Costs

On better quitting

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Continuing to sink costs into a failing endeavor is, as we’ve all been told, a bad idea. (“Quit while you’re ahead!” “Don’t put good money after bad!” ) This is advice I’ve given myself as recently as last month.

But in the heat of the moment, how do you actually get yourself to cut your losses? What is the state of mind that allows us to actually do, in practice, the difficult thing that everyone agrees in abstract is correct? That question is the subject of this post.

I’ve reworked this draft several times over the past couple months, trying to find the right words to capture the attitude I’m talking about—and honestly I’m still not totally satisfied. In some ways, I think it’s easier to say what good quitting does not look like: a moment of immense grief or celebration. Unfortunately, those are the emotional scripts most readily handed to us by the culture. Instead, I think the proper quitting headspace is a kind of profound flippancy (or zen, if you want to be poetic about it). This kind of nonattachment is necessary in order for us to stop early and often—and it is one that can be cultivated with practice.

To see how this operates, it might help to think about a low-stakes example—say, a situation where you’ve already locked your front door and stepped outside only to realize it’s raining heavily. (In this case, the “sunk cost” is the time you spent locking up/walking outside, and “quitting” retracing your steps to get proper rain gear.) Surely most reasonable people here would recognize that a) it is in fact correct not to double down on your original course of action; b) nothing is gained by complaining or self-flagellating over your initial error; and c) there is no great honor in making this necessary correction. After perhaps a mild twinge of annoyance, I expect most of us would simply shrug and go grab an umbrella.

Now compare this to a higher-stakes scenario—say leaving a job or relationship you’ve spent years in. In these cases, we tend to freeze up and place great emotional stakes on the decision, as if we are actors in a play. But structurally these big changes are really no different than going back to grab your umbrella. Here as well, when you’ve been walking down a bad path for a long time, you should recognize that a) it is in fact correct not to double down on your original course of action; b) nothing is gained by complaining or self-flagellating over your initial error; and c) there is no great honor in making this necessary correction. If we could also learn to approach these most important moments with something closer to a shrug, we would be able to navigate change with greater speed and success.¹

How do you get to that headspace? Again, I’m struggling a bit to find the words, but for me, these are some ideas that help:

1. Quitting is a skill — And like any skill, it improves with practice. When you have less life experience, abandoning a sinking ship can feel particularly terrifying because you’re not confident you’ll find a lifeboat—let alone a better ship. You are leaving behind the certainty of one path (even one you hate) for the vague assurance of “something better,” yet you have no direct evidence things will work out. As you go through more and more cycles of landing on your feet, though, you’ll begin to develop a quiet confidence that there will be something better, even if you don’t yet know what it is.

2. Set quitting goals and benchmarks — These past twelve months, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to bail on at least five books. (I’m pleased to say I’ve met it!) I set this target because while I knew in the abstract that I am an imperfect selector of my own reading material, I’ve historically been quite bad at admitting this in the middle of slogging through. Defining in advance that you will quit a certain amount (or setting kill criteria which tell you in advance when you should quit) gives you a better shot at recognizing mistakes in the moment.

3. Moving towards, not away — Continuing to read a book you hate (or do anything you hate) isn’t just a bad choice it’s making you miserable; it’s also bad because of the opportunity cost it poses. In the book example, it’s very clear that this cost is the time I could be spent reading something else I actually like. I find it easier to quit when I keep front of mind this positive vision (i.e., the “something else” I’m making space for, even if vague) rather than looking backwards with regret.

4. If you feel fifty-fifty, you should already have quit — Research shows that people who are “on the fence” about a change consistently report being happy they made it after the fact.² As with all biases, simply knowing about this pitfall is not enough to completely avoid it; but because it is so frequent and recognizable, I do think mere awareness helps. Imagine yourself as a child running up the down escalator, whose true speed will be revealed when you step off.

5. A pause, not an end — When quitting, I often find it useful to tell myself that I could return to a failing project—though in practice I rarely do. The knowledge that the break is (theoretically) temporary makes it feel less stakesy. (This does risk a lack of closure; but in some situations, it can give you the push you need to get over the hurdle.)

There’s a passing line from Macbeth I sometimes think about when I’m bailing on a piece of writing or carefully considered plan. Of a character killed offstage,³ we are told: “He died / As one that had been studied in his death. / To throw away the dearest thing he owed, / As 'twere a careless trifle.” The character in question is a minor one, sentenced to death for treason—but I always detect a note of admiration in that line: If only we too had the sangfroid, the equanimity, the chutzpah to die as if it meant nothing to us.

Quitting is always a kind of death—of an idea, a relationship, an investment in a particular future—and death is never easy to accept. But in time, I do think we can learn to face it from a calmer stance. We can in one breath recognize what must be changed, and in the next breath change it.

1. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t deliberate over major life decisions; just that once it becomes clear it’s time to quit, we should strive to enact that choice quickly and calmly.

2. I’ve cited this study before at least once so I won’t go into too much detail. Basically, it asked participants to preregister a decision and flip a coin, then followed up with them six months later.

3. Although the execution is not described in the play itself, here’s a brutal depiction from a film adaptation.