Scroll down to read along with the imperfect transcript
Ever felt stuck in a movie you regretted watching but endured because you paid for the ticket? We’re diving deep into a similar phenomenon that might be holding you back in life – the Sunk Cost Fallacy aka the silent career killer! If you’ve been holding onto a legal career just because you’ve invested time, energy, and money, then stay tuned for a mind-shift journey. Let’s unravel the Sunk Cost Fallacy together and discover why it might be keeping you from your true calling. Don’t miss this eye-opening episode where we’ll uncover the emotional ties that keep you trapped and help you start to pave the way to a future that aligns with you.
In the journey of personal and professional growth, understanding and overcoming the Sunk Cost Fallacy can be a game-changer. As a seasoned guide in the legal field, I believe shedding light on this emotional barrier is crucial for anyone looking to break free from the chains of unfulfilling paths. Here are five key takeaways from this episode:
Key Takeaways from the Episode
Recognizing the Fallacy: Understand what the Sunk Cost Fallacy is and how it might be subtly influencing your decisions, keeping you tethered to a path that no longer serves you.
Learning from Experience: Shift your perspective from viewing past investments as losses to valuable lessons. Discover how every moment contributes to your growth and understanding.
Navigating Emotional Barriers: Acknowledge the emotional aspect that often keeps professionals stuck, even when they recognize the fallacy intellectually. Learn strategies to reconnect your rational and emotional selves.
Facing Fears Head-On: Explore the fears that commonly plague legal professionals contemplating a change, from concerns about judgment to the fear of losing the familiar. Gain insights into managing and overcoming these fears.
Empowering Decision-Making: Realize that making a change is not synonymous with failure. Empower yourself to make decisions aligned with your true aspirations, and embrace the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
Select Quotes from the Episode
“Rather than LEARN something from the experience, they focus on the potential LOSS of changing directions or their mind.”
“It’s the fears that keep us back. It’s the fears that keep us stuck. You’re not a failure.”
“Start looking for the sunk cost fallacies in your life, in your thoughts, and start to shift your focus towards the what ifs that could go RIGHT – you’re not alone. You are not a failure, and you are not stuck.”
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Imperfect Transcript from this Episode
Alright, so let’s talk about what we came here to talk about: sunk cost fallacies.
First and foremost, what’s a sunk cost fallacy? Well, first, to know what a sunk cost fallacy is, we have to know what a fallacy is, and to know what a fallacy is, we have to know what logic is, so let’s go back to the beginning.
Logic is traditionally defined as the study of the laws of thought or correct reasoning, and is usually understood in terms of inferences or arguments. In essence, Logic is the science of the formal principles of reasoning. I love me some Socratic method, yeah?
Reasoning is the act of drawing inferences, while Arguments are the outward expression of inferences. An argument is a set of premises together with a conclusion. You know this, but let’s think about it this way: when we get a judgment in from the court on a motion, we flip to the back to review the final language of the order. We want to see if the court adopted our proposed order. Sometimes, courts will combine proposed orders from the parties, because you were right in some aspects and I was right in another, and that third party intervenor had some other good points. But what do we do?
We immediately go to that last few lines of the judgment to see the holding, then we go back to the beginning and snuff out the reasoning. As we’re reading, unless it’s super clear we won outright, we’re thinking about an appeal. We’re looking for errors in the court’s reasoning or application of law, right?
Well, a fallacy is an error in reasoning.
And there are many different types of fallacies, lots of errors in reasoning, but the one that I see the MOST with my clients, including successful lawyers, is the sunk cost fallacy. You don’t see this one very often in the courts, but I see it all the time in real life.
So, what’s a sunk cost fallacy?
Sunk cost fallacy is continuing on a course of action that no longer serves you, simply because of the time or effort or money put in. Let me give you a couple of easy examples to warm your brain up, and then we’ll go into the one about being a lawyer.
Choosing to finish a boring movie because you already paid for the ticket is an example of a sunk cost fallacy. In fact, I remember when my mother told me she walked out of Pulp Fiction and I was floored! But she paid the ticket, she bought snacks, but she did NOT CARE. She was a wild woman. Another example is keeping an incompetent employee or contractor on staff rather than replacing them because you’ve already invested tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours training them.
In both of these examples, there was time, money and energy spent, and so there’s an underlying belief that if you change direction or change your mind, that you’ve quote-unquote “LOST” that time and money and energy.
But in reality: you’ve actually “LEARNED” something with that time and money and energy.
So, let’s apply this to the example of being an attorney:
I’ve had clients tell me – on a ton of occasions – that they spent a lot of time and energy on getting the highest score on the LSAT, so they could go to their choice law school, and then spent a lot of time and energy getting stellar grades so they could be top of their class so they could make law review and then get a summer clerkship with a Judge, so they could pass the bar, so they could get a 6-figure job at a white shoe firm right out of law school.
And sometimes, they include the cost of that – too many missed parties, too many missed weddings, too many hours of lost sleep, a mountain of student loans, too many years quote-unquote “LOST” …
Therefore, they argue, they can’t do anything except be an attorney or work as a litigator in the expertise they currently have because … wait for it … they put in too much to just quit now.
That’s the sunk cost fallacy.
Rather than LEARN something from the experience, they focus on the potential LOSS of changing directions or their mind.
The sunk cost fallacy is believing that we have to continue to follow through on an endeavor if we have already invested time, effort, and/or money into it, regardless of whether the costs outweigh the benefits.
But it’s not just an error in reasoning, and this is the part I want you to pay attention to – you might be making an error in your reasoning, but even if you correct the error, most lawyers still wind up in the same place. They recognize that they spent all this time and energy and money, and they recognize that they can leave or change their mind, intellectually of course, but it’s the EMOTIONAL piece that keeps lawyers stuck. And that’s what we need to reconnect. This is the work I do everyday, right? Reconnecting your intellectual self to your emotional self.
It’s the fears that keep us back. It’s the fears that keep us stuck.
You’re not a failure.
The system is built to make you believe that the fallacy is actually CORRECT logic, CORRECT reasoning. But this is on purpose. To keep the system going – to keep the money flowing – to keep the clients served. I’m not saying it’s wrong. And I’m certainly not saying it’s right. All I’m pointing out is that when we consider that you can’t change the system, and we believe that is true, that we are actually fulfilling the system’s primary purpose – to keep us stuck so we keep feeding the machine.
So, what’s underneath that sunk cost fallacy? It’s FEAR. Emotions. And you know what fears lawyers have the most? I’ll tell you. And I want you to know now, these are all things that clients have told me they’re afraid of when they came to work with me – and they got over these fears, they’re managing these fears, and they have the tools now to handle them well – so here we go!
The kinds of fears that keep lawyers stuck are that:
They’ll die young, of a heart attack or stroke
They’ll blow up their lives
That others will look at them stupid for changing their career
That they’ll be ostracized from their friends for not going with the current
They have fears of losing their friends because they won’t have anything in common anymore
Fear losing their job
Fear not meeting the requirements of their j.o.b. – billables, expectations to work on weekends, be available 24/7 even when you’re on vacation and then you piss off a partner or a client and lose your job
Fears that everything they worked for will be for nothing
Fear that all the student loans will not be paid back and being afraid to make a move until student loans are paid (which is an excuse – there are ways to deal with this and I help clients figure out their best income based repayment options)
Fear that they won’t “make it” in a new job or be hired in a new job because why would someone want to hire a litigator as in-house counsel, which means they think they will fail, when they haven’t even tried yet
Fear that they’ll start admitting what’s not working in life and that all the people they care about will leave, fall away, including spouse – divorce, etc. – and that will create a domino effect
SIDE BAR – I keep getting this vision of an ostrich with her head in the sand, but what no one knows is that ostriches do this to turn their eggs so that they develop their chicks and the chicks can hatch on time – so the best thing you can actually do, is stick your head in the sand and start making moves.
So what else have lawyers told me they fear? They’ve said they
Fear not having time, energy, to do the work that they’re currently being paid to do because they’re already dying inside and exhausted
Not ready to move forward because they have too much on their plate already (which is honestly why they come to me for help)
They say they have too many bills to quit
Too many responsibilities to others to quit
Too many people relying on them and looking to them (and proud of them, like parents).
And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Maybe you have some that aren’t on that list. I don’t know what your future holds, but I definitely want to help you figure it out. I want to help you figure out how you got where you are, so that you can do what you need to do for yourself – so you can be happy, healthy, joyful and thriving – it’s completely possible.
I don’t know if you follow her, but Morgan Harper Nichols posted something on Instagram a couple of years ago about failure and I’m always sharing it with clients and people who are afraid of failure, because what she says is so powerful – and I’m going to share it here as we close out. Ready?
You are not a failure if you’re not feeling positive or optimistic right now.
You are not a failure because you were not able to help someone how you hoped to.
You are not a failure for needing to ask for help…again.
You are not a failure for not getting everything done today (even if you’ve been taught to feel that way).
You are not a failure because you haven’t accomplished what your peers have accomplished (even if it looks or feels that way).
You are not a failure for taking longer to complete tasks than others.
You are not a failure for needing more clarification or instruction so you can complete the task.
You are not a failure for needing longer breaks.
You are a human being and you are doing what you can with what you have and you are free to take a deep breath.
You are free to pace yourself.
So, as we wrap up, I’ll just say – start looking for the sunk cost fallacies in your life, in your thoughts, and start to shift your focus towards the what ifs that could go RIGHT – you’re not alone. You are not a failure, and you are not stuck. I’m going to share more with you about the scariest decision you can make – stay or go – in the next episode, so keep listening. I got you.