The thing about sunk costs
Tomorrow is another opportunity.
There are thirty people over there who are just waiting for you to help connect them, lead them or make things better. But if you’re still defending the stuck project over here, the one you put so much into, you won’t be able to show up for them.
Customers, partners, clients and students who need your voice or your product aren’t going to benefit from it because you’re working so hard to dig yourself out of a previous hole, a situation that is now harder than ever to work your way through.
It’s easy to focus on the problem right in front of us, and to decide that this problem, and only this problem, is the problem for us to solve. But there’s a cost to everything, and the opportunity lost when you’re doing this is just as real, even when you don’t notice it.
Of course, we don’t create contribution by flitting from one thing to another whenever things get difficult. But we also sell ourselves short (and harm the people we’d be able to serve) if we’re unable to quit a project that’s gone sideways.
What happened yesterday already happened. It’s a gift and an asset from your previous self. You don’t have to accept if you don’t want to.