“But I am like this only.”
“But this is how I’ve always been doing it.”
“This is how it has been since… forever!”
Heard such statements before? You surely have. Do such statements leave a good impression on you? Probably not. Why? Because we all know, that if we want to get ahead, to improve, we need to adapt and change. But sentences like the ones above, indicate exactly the opposite. Something has been done a particular way, and there is no way I’ll change that.
This actually has a name. It’s called the sunk-cost fallacy. It is also called the Concorde fallacy. That second name was a bit of a giveaway wasn’t it?
This refers to the stubbornness of the governments that made the Concorde. They kept drowning it in cash even after it was clear that it was a commercial disaster. They had already put in so much money and effort, i.e. ‘sunk costs’, that they were just unwilling to change.
We all know the ultimate fate of the Concorde. Would we want to end up like that?