It should come as no surprise that an ops guy like myself loves a good system for organization. Wikis, notebooks, task lists– I love building and optimizing systems for both productivity personally and within my team. But there comes a time when I come to recognize we’ve simply outgrown an existing system – and it’s time to start from scratch.
Yet making a decision like this is tough when you’ve already invested so much time and energy in the old way of doing things. It feels like all that past work was wasted.
It’s the classic sunk cost fallacy – We think we’re losing something, all those hours we invested in the old system if we move to the new one. Of course – the longer you spend using a system that doesn’t work, the more you’re losing moving forward.
So it’s always worth asking yourself “why am I fighting this change?” And if the answer is a sunk cost, your next question ought to be “what do I lose by not making this change?”
Don’t let your sunk costs hide. They lose a lot of their power once you shed light on them.