When I was ten years old, I went to see a museum exhibit of artifacts from ancient Egypt. 

The detailed sarcophagi, tomb ornaments, and mummies were all memorable, but most of all I was spellbound by the tour guide herself. She seemed to know everything and always had an answer. She was full of enthusiasm. She had the ability to make the history and culture of a millennia-old civilization come to life. She also happened to be an old family friend.

From her, I learned that the Phoenix Art Museum’s docent program was free and open to anyone who was willing to take the classes. Anyone, with enough training, could become a docent and lead tours of their own. Misty-eyed I thought, “I want to do this someday.”

Fast forward 20 years, and finally, I did.

Every Monday morning at 9 am I would drive down to the museum and for the next three hours attend workshops and lectures. Soon I was putting together tours of my own and leading people around the galleries. I’m not sure how many hours I spent before finally graduating two years later, but it was well over 200.

I wore my badge with pride that first year as a fully-fledged docent.  The tours and the studies continued. I met and guided dozens of schoolkids of all ages through all kinds of exhibits: modern, baroque, ancient China, and Mesoamerica – even a line-up of historic race cars at one point. These eager-faced students taught me just as much as I taught them. And then something happened.

I quit.

No, there was no dramatic, inciting event. No one said or did anything to drive me away (in fact, my fellow docents were some of the kindest, most welcoming people I’d ever met).

It happened slowly, quietly. It started with a realization that crept up on me and then settled in the back of my brain. The realization was, “I love this, but not enough. It doesn’t fit into the rest of my life.”

That realization nagged at me until finally, I listened to it. Just as I had plunged myself wholeheartedly into being a docent, I quickly walked away from it. I wrote an explanation to the museum and to my fellow docents, and I haven’t been back since.

Had I made some kind of colossal mistake in the first place? Had I just wasted three years and hundreds of hours of my life?

Not at all.

The False Thinking Behind the Sunk Cost Effect

In finance, there is a term known as “sunk cost.” It refers to an amount of money that has been spent and can no longer be recovered.

In life, any endeavor that we quit becomes a sunk cost. We pay with our time, and time – unlike money – can’t be regained in any amount. It makes sense, then, that we would want to use our time as carefully as possible so that we don’t do anything to waste it.

But is an abortive project or undertaking always a waste? Should we think of something as a “failure” because it ended sooner than it was “supposed” to?

This sort of thinking, arguably, is what leads to the so-called Sunk Cost Effect. Most of us are familiar with this phenomenon: we put our money, time, or energy into something, only to find it’s not working out. Not like we’d hoped, anyway.

Instead of cutting our losses, though, we keep going. “I’ve put too much into this thing,” the typical thinking goes. “If I quit now, it will just be a big waste.” In fact, people from Western, individualistic cultures are potentially even more at risk for the Sunk Cost Effect because they feel so much pressure to make the “right” decision for their life trajectories. ¹

A sunk cost need not be a case of all or nothing. Instead, we can see it as a brave venture and a creative detour towards our final destination.

The Sunk Cost Effect can manifest as something relatively minor, like a failed side hustle, or something major and long-term, like a marriage. Many of us have seen more than one miserable relationship drag on for way too long because the people involved felt a sense of guilt or obligation.

Much has been made of how the Sunk Cost Effect shows how illogical we humans are. And this is certainly the case: it makes no sense to keep pursuing something that’s not working, out of pride or fear or some other reflexive emotion.

But there is another, much more positive way to look at the whole thing. A sunk cost need not be a case of all or nothing. Instead, we can see it as a brave venture and a creative detour towards our final destination.

A way to jumpstart this kind of thinking is to ask yourself: “What can I salvage or bring from this into the next phase of my life?”

In the case of the Phoenix Art Museum docent program, I had racked up months of public speaking and other initiatives that had forced me out of my comfort zone. Even though I don’t continue to do those same things today, the life skills I learned are still there. So are the memories, experiences, and things I learned about art, people, and so much else.

Of course, some sunk costs may be more bitter to accept than others. The longer you continue in one direction before quitting, the more discouraging it can feel to start rerouting. But with a little creativity, you can almost certainly find the positives in your so-called failed experience. 

In some cases, these sunk costs may even be laying the foundation for your future successes.

Connecting the Dots Looking Backwards

Steve Jobs dropped out of Stanford University after just six months. 

By doing this, he retroactively “wasted” his money on the tuition up to that point. Still, Jobs chose to quit because he did not want to spend any more of his parents’ hard-earned savings until he figured out what he wanted to do with his life.

He had next to no money of his own so he slept on the floors of friends’ houses and paid for food by recycling Coke bottles. Each Sunday, he walked seven miles to the Hare Krishna temple to eat his one good meal of the week. The upside of all this? He was now free to experiment and study whatever interested him. So he took a class on calligraphy.

The class taught Jobs all about typography and the art and symmetry behind serif and san-serif fonts, and he found it fascinating. He wasn’t looking to pursue it as a career, though. It was a one-off venture that he assumed would provide no serious value after it was over.

Luckily, he was wrong.

Ten years later, when Jobs and his friends were designing the first Macintosh computer, everything he had learned from his calligraphy class came back to him. Thanks to the concepts he’d learned, the Mac became the first personal computer to have multiple typefaces and fonts that were proportionally spaced. The rest, as we know, is history.

Jobs himself describes it this way:

“If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.” ²

We can’t connect the dots in our lives looking forward – only looking backward. At the time it happens, an abandoned project or pursuit can feel like little more like a dead end, failure, or one-off experiment. We don’t see how these experiences will later interlock with others, tendril-like, until they form our life legacy.

When you look at it this way, what you see as a sunk cost may not be so: rather, it’s another layer in the foundation of what you’re going to do next. It’s a scenic, roundabout route that leads to your next destination. If nothing else, it’s a step further to knowing who you are, what you want, and what you don’t want out of life.

If a project or an endeavor doesn’t make sense, don’t embark. But if you’re already on your way and you can tell it’s not the right direction, don’t be afraid to jump ship, either.

It’s not just about saving time and cutting costs. It’s about staying flexible and being brave as you tinker around to find out exactly what you want to do.

Look for the hidden joys and upsides in your sunk costs.

Read Next: Why Now Is Always the Right Time →

1. Yoder, C. Y., Mancha, R., & Agrawal, N. (2014). Culture-related Factors Affect Sunk Cost Bias. Behavioral Development Bulletin, 19(4), 105–118. doi:10.1037/h0101086.
2. You can find the full story, along with the rest of Jobs’ speech, here