There is a human tendency to stay with something after we have put a lot of time, energy, money etc. into it – even when it no longer makes sense.
After a significant amount of money is lost, some gamblers will stay the course only to increase their pain.
Some stock traders will watch stocks go down and down and won’t consider getting out hoping “the bottom is in” only to see it trek lower.
Owning a car that is a lemon is a trying experience. I’ve witnessed people paying month after month for repairs. It’s almost like they have accepted their lot and automatically, without thinking, keep dumping money into a POS.
There’s a time to cut your losses and run. Many people just can’t seem to find that point.
The Sunk Cost Fallacy (SCF) can be applied to so many parts of life: Education, careers, relationships, home ownership – it is a universal concept.
You’re eating right and you’re exercising. You’re maintaining a healthy weight and you’re getting the rest you need. Above all, you’re feeling pretty damn good.
And you’re not just feeling good physically, but you’re also feeling good mentally about what you have accomplished for your health. You should. You did good.
Pat yourself on the back because not everyone is able to do what you’ve done. For one reason or another they can’t establish a good plan and then stick to it.
Perhaps you are one of the 10,000 people per day in the U.S. that are turning retirement age and are channeling Johnny Paycheck in letting their bosses know that they can give your job to someone else.
Good for you. So what’s next?
Perhaps your Vision Board for retirement includes a picture of you on a beach drinking a Mai Tai and watching the waves roll in. Or maybe a golf course in Boca Raton.
No worries. No stress. Just sunshine.
Not everyone would get bored with this routine after a few weeks, but I would. So what’s next after that?
Organizational leaders, whether in business, politics, or non-profit, often miss some important things when managing their organization. In almost all cases, it’s because they 1) don’t have a good “30,000 foot view” of what is going on and 2) a diverse group of advisors is not assembled and consulted.
Take Vladimir Putin for instance. He’s making a big mess. I originally gave him much more credit as a leader than he deserved. But he chose to surround himself with “Yes Men” and the result has been catastrophic. If you have any doubt of this, I encourage you to watch Putin Scores 8 Goals.
I made a “Stupid List” for the company I worked for that detailed the top 10 things the company did not address. It was mostly in my head, but it helped me keep my sanity. One of the things on my list was that we never really sat down and addressed the big problems facing our company. It was like the company was running on automatic and continued patching an archaic operating system.
My Stupid List
This all changed when one of the managers got the idea to hire a consulting firm. The first thing the firm did was sit us all down and have us diagnose our own problems and then implement solutions.
We needed an outsider to tell us all to sit down and talk about how we can improve. Wow. That was a big miss.
Hiring consultants is a great idea for any business. It’s like hiring a marriage counselor or a therapist. Outside perspectives are great. They can solve big obvious problems that can’t be seen by insiders.
In our case, the obvious issue was that we didn’t sit down together and discuss what was wrong with the business.
And that’s exactly what we should be doing with the pandemic – sitting down and thinking about the things we can improve on.
With this in mind, I have made my own list for the pandemic:
Top 12 List of Stupid Things We did During the Pandemic:
For our gym, scheduled workouts have been a positive development during the pandemic.
Since the early days of the pandemic, Fay’s Fitness changed to a scheduled model of exercising to limit the number of people in the gym. Now, everyone that exercises here has timeslots for their workouts.
If you read my blog, you know I workout with three 50-something women. I keep playing with the workouts and the class format. We experiment with all sorts of things like eccentrics and drop sets added to the routine. For the last few months we’ve done Lift 4 on Beachbody which is a combination of hypertrophy workouts and HIIT cardio.
These women have stuck with me through all of this. Go figure.
This month, we went back to the basics of building strength: Lifting heavy, pushing limits, writing stuff down.
What if summer in Upstate New York suddenly turned to Fall and on September 21st, all the leaves on the trees changed color overnight?
Upstate NY Fall Colors
That’s just not how the seasons work. They transition.
Humans have one of the longest transitions from infant to full grown adult in the animal kingdom. About 1/4 of our life is spent growing up.
But when it comes to personal change, we want things to happen overnight. If our life is off course, we expect some self-help guru to bring us to “life-changing moments” to turn the ship around immediately.
But that’s not how things work. Our life is full of changes and most of these changes happen over time in transitions. They include:
Everyone wants a long life, but few work toward a truly meaningful one.
We laid to rest my step-mother in June. Her life was the epitome of meaning.
Nancy E. Fay NP was diagnosed with Type I diabetes back in the 1950’s. We know now that the life expectancy for someone diagnosed in the 50’s with Type 1 was about 55 years old. She died at 77.
Nancy not only beat the odds, but went on to live an extraordinary life.
Nancy was a Registered Nurse, a Nurse Practitioner, and a Physician Assistant. She was also a certified Diabetes Educator. She paved new roads for the benefit of people with diabetes locally and state wide. She established the first diabetes educational programs in the Mohawk Valley and she was the first to receive medical coverage for such in the U.S. Nancy was the first female non physician to become president of the NYS Diabetes Association.
Nancy was a trail blazer. Her whole professional life was full of meaning, and much of her meaning came from her illness – diabetes. She was a living testament to all those with diabetes on how one can live an extraordinary life with the condition IF it is well managed.
In her pursuit to help with diabetes management, she was a guinea pig for the local use of the insulin pump, which is widely used today.
The memorial in her honor was indeed a celebration. She beat the odds and lived a life of true meaning. A life to be proud of.
A much different “celebration of life” was saying goodbye to my friend Kate this past summer. She was 39 years old.
Kate and Her Dad – 2008 Tioga County Fitness Challenge
By looking at past and current trends, you can estimate what’s in store for your future.
There is a tool in Microsoft Excel to extrapolate data on a chart. Put in a few data points and it will tell you what the next number will likely be.
For instance, if you weighed 150 pounds when you were 20, 160 at 30 and 170 pounds at 40, you could estimate, based on the trend, that you will weigh 180 pounds at 50.
