The Fallacy of Sunk Costs- Who’s into it?
Sometimes a benefit and other times a detriment of long farm days are the countless hours alone with one’s thoughts. A morning spent pruning tomatoes and dragging irrigation lines offers opportunity to practice deep breathing, mindfully listen to the sparrow songs or to stew on last night’s suboptimal conversation with your sister while mentally spiraling about foreign affairs. There’s time for it all!
We spend many moments with the gentle coo of the wind but also keep our brains stimulated with a wide assortment of podcasts. A few of us love “The Gray Area with Sean Illing.” This is a philosophy show that covers culture, politics, and other big conversation topics. I’m pretty sure it was here, I learned about one of my now favorite philosophical principle that comes in handy most farm days and in the rest of life, too. It’s called “The fallacy of sunk costs.” Anyone else a fan??
This concept expresses the mental error in one’s tendency to keep going on an endeavor just for the sake of finishing it. You’ve invested some time, money, and energy so you want to complete a task even if the costs of completing it outweigh the positives. It’s knowing when to cut losses and till in those overly weedy carrots, shrug your shoulders and leave the last 10% of the giant fruit tree unpruned or close the book you’re not loving and pick up something else. There’s nothing to gain by doing otherwise!
Every day, we look at our mammoth to-do list and decide what’s a priority and what just isn’t going to happen and not infrequently we kiss some hard work goodbye for the sake of future plantings and more vital tasks. Prioritization and letting go might be a farmer’s most important skills and are just nifty life talents, too, aiding in efficiency, time, productivity and happiness!