The Sunk Cost Fallacy
It's Not Too Late Part 4/4
If you’ve ever wondered, “Is it too late for me to...” the answer’s NO and The Uplifters is about to show you why. This space is for purpose-driven women who want to do big, brave things in the second half of their lives.
Over the last few weeks, my goal has been to prove to you, one stubborn assumption at a time, that it’s not too late to do big, brave things. Welcome to the last installment of this little series.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4: In for a penny, in for a pound.
When I got laid off after almost twenty years of working in corporate, I kept circling a rather frustrating question: Was it a waste to start something brand new after pouring all that time, energy, and I-know-what-I’m-doing-ness into one thing? I kept thinking that maybe I should keep doing the thing that clearly wasn’t working for me since I’d already invested so much into it. Yes, I knew that route would pull me further away from the things that most energized and excited me at that point in my life, but making a pivot felt like a waste of my prior investments.
This is what economists call the sunk cost fallacy: we keep pouring money, time, or energy into something because of what we’ve already invested, not because of what it’s actually worth to us going forward. The classic example is the movie ticket. You’re twenty minutes in; the movie’s terrible, but you paid $18 for it, so you stay. The $18 is gone either way, and sitting through the rest of the movie doesn’t get it back. All it costs you is two more hours of your life watching something that stinks.
Now swap “movie ticket” for “career,” “marriage,” “business,” or “eighteen years of working in corporate”. By midlife, we’re not talking about $18. We’re talking decades of time, energy, money, and, ahem, our entire identity. Pivoting away from that is less like watching a bad movie for two more hours and more like setting the theater on fire.
So instead of cutting our losses, we dig in (at least I did). We try to manufacture more energy and passion for the thing that isn’t working anymore, because admitting it might be time to walk feels like a waste. We let the past investment decide our path, instead of asking whether the thing is still worth investing our future in.
I’ve been thinking about this because I sat down yesterday for a pre-interview with Lisa Congdon, a wildly successful artist, author, and illustrator. Over the last two decades, she built what, for many, would be the dream career: a life as a full-time artist, including a thriving online and brick-and-mortar shop, a team she loved, and big client commissions. And she just made the decision to close it, because every time she analyzed why she was keeping it all going, every single reason was about someone else. Her team, her partners, her customers. But never herself.
It takes a whole lot of courage to shift gears, even more so when we’re cruising down the road at 90 miles per hour. When Lisa slowed down long enough to ask herself what was right for her now and what she wanted for her future self, the answers were very different.
“What would it mean about the last twenty years if I stopped?” builds fear. “What’s right for me right now?” builds courage capital.
And when we slow down and look at the whole picture, we will likely find that nothing was wasted. The skills we build don’t disappear when we change direction. They come with us. The only thing that’s actually a waste is the damn energy we spend defending a decision that no longer fits, instead of redirecting that same energy into something we actually care about now.
P.S. Shout out to vision boards. Every year at our annual Uplifters Retreat, we make vision boards. Last year, I put three names on mine of women I wanted to interview for the show. Lisa was one of them.
If you could use some dedicated time to get clear on what you actually want for the year ahead and get ready to make it happen, snag a spot before they’re gone. It sells out every year, and for good reason.
Kristy Jeansonne, who has attended for the last two years, puts it this way: “I will never not attend this retreat. Everything I put on my vision board and the plans I make there change the entire year for my business and my life. Instead of spending the first six months trying to figure out my priorities, I launch into the year refreshed and ready to go.”