“When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” And perhaps you’ve ignored this law. We often compound bad choices by continuing to invest time, money, and effort in losing causes instead of stanching our losses and switching tactics. We increase funding in a hopeless project because we’ve spent so much already. We redouble efforts to salvage an irredeemable relationship because we’ve already devoted a few years to it. The psychological concept is known as “escalation of commitment to a failing course of action.” It’s one of the many cognitive biases that can pollute our decisions. It’s also
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