#JKLTip What are you hanging on to mentaly that is draining resources from the things you really want to do? Move on, now
If we aren’t rich, if we aren’t gifted, then we need to ignore sunk costs fast if we are going to be successful. “You have sunk my battleship” is a pretty annoying thing to have to say when playing the board game battleship. No doubt it means a step back for me, and a step forward for them. In that moment, in that time that’s precisely what it means. It doesn’t however tell us the big picture. Was it the canoe, the submarine, or aircraft carrier? It’s a big difference between boat values. Some are simply worth more. It also doesn’t give us context, do we have every boat left, while they are on their last one? Or is it a tie game? Again, big difference.
In learning, business, and life our battleships sink. A result of multiple, complex factors, sometimes more attributed to circumstance, sometimes to others actions, sometimes to ourselves. Either way it’s a combination of things, some of which we control, some we don’t. They still sink. We call these “sunk costs”. On a project, there will be many costs of resources, energy, time, human capital, money and the like. For those of us not gifted with pure talent, not handed money, the ability to move past our sunk costs as quickly as possible is crucial
We have no real way of knowing if a. An idea will work and b. If a pursuit is something that will help us be our best selves, until we try. At the same time, we can not accomplish anything great without investing. Up front we should know that there will be effort, dedication, frustration and it may not work. If we recognize the omens and signs are simply not aligning with our values, then we need to chalk them up as sunk costs and move on. Some practical examples might be hanging on to a career we’ve been in that it feels we’re trapped. Or a book we’re half done writing that we realize is just not going to be what we want to put out into the world. The longer we hang on, the longer we fight the notion that our battleship is destroyed, the longer we have to wait to go back on the offence