Sunk Cost Fallacy

We all have seen the sunk cost fallacy in action at some point, whether it be sitting through that bad movie because we have already paid for it or finishing that awful book because we were already halfway through. Everyone has been in a situation where they ended up wasting more time because they were trying to salvage the time they had already invested. A sunk cost, also known as a retrospective cost, is one that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered by any additional action. The sunk cost fallacy refers to the tendency of human beings to make decisions based on how much of an investment they have already made, which leads to even more investment but no returns whatsoever. Sometimes, hard as it is, the best thing to do is to let go.

A way to save yourself from this cognitive bias is by focusing on future benefits and costs rather than the already lost past costs. You have to develop the habit, hard as it is, of ignoring the previous cost information.   

Rahul Agarwal writing in Built in