January 10, 2006

• Topic: The psychology of sunk costs…the legitimate potential to improve the psychology of the world

  
  

  On Sunday, I got on the Long Island Rail Road to watch the Giants game in New York City.  I have a monthly train ticket, that cost $203.  On Sunday, I left my ticket in a different jacket.  My initial thought was, “shit…i’m gonna have to pay $6 for no reason.”  Well…because I bought the ticket on the train, and not from the machine, there was an additional $6 charge.  I ended up WASTING $12.  Plus the $6 to get home, that’s nearly $20 that I spent simply because I left that little monthly ticket at home.

  
  

  Some people in this situation would feel various emotions.  Regret. Guilt. Anger.  For me, I realized that the circumstances were fixed.  There was nothing I could do to change the situation.  So my thinking was based on the reality of the present moment, not some fictitious moment where I might still have had my ticket and would have avoided the payment.

  
  

  After my junior year of college, I worked at a restaurant.  Within a couple of days, I had made about $250, and bought myself a Specialized mountain bike that I rode around St. Louis and to work.  One night after work, around 1am, I discovered someone had stolen my bike seat.  After about 10seconds of running through negative emotions, I quickly accepted the situation, rode home while standing out of the saddle the whole time, and went to buy a new bike seat the next day.  At that moment, I learned the lesson of the sunk cost.

  
  

  The idea of the sunk cost is the idea that you have lost something meaningful to you.  You wish you could have access to you bike seat, or to your train ticket, but you don’t, and as a result, you are inconvenienced.  You suffer pracitcally, logistically, and financially.  However, you do not necessarily need to suffer emotionally!

  
  

  There is one type of sunk cost that has managed to plague me emotionally.  And that is the idea of lost relationships, and lost experiences.  For a while, I suffered with the idea that I had 4years to learn so much in college, but I didn’t.  That time is a sunk cost.  For a while, I suffered with not being able to access in my memory so many people and conversations I’ve had in my life.  For a while, I suffered with not being able to be friends with so many people who I had felt close to at one point or another in my life.  Friends from school, from summer program, from travelling.

  
  

  In an effort to combat the negative psychology that has affected me, with regards to the sunk costs of time and relationships, I have begun dedicating myself to concentrating on the past, as part of an effort to build my future.  I not only want to learn new things, I want to learn those things that I was exposed to growing up.  I not only want to make new friends, I want to build on friendships that have faded slightly over time.  I not only want to develop new ideas…I want to dig back into my journals and my past, and build on those things.

  
  

  Thanks to xanga, and the efforts I made in the past, I had an old acquaintance comment on my site, a guy named Andrew who I wrote about in Dec. of 2003.  The last 2 years of my life have been so life altering and ridiculous in terms of the scope of experiences, people, and thoughts, that the sunk costs of not having instant access to all of them have sometimes caused me great mental anguish.  But, the person who commented had the effect of shaking the snow-globe that is my brain…referring to those tourist trinkets people buy, where there’s a snowman in an encased glass full of water, and when you shake it white bits begin to fill the globe, giving the effect of snow. 

  
  

  That’s how my brian is…perhaps, that’s how all our brains are.  I don’t believe we lose memories, rather, memory is merely organizing information within the brain.  Time magazine has its cover article about neuroscience, and improving our brains.  Scientists are learning that our ability to learn actually increases in age, perhaps because we become more equipped with tools for accessing files inside our memories. 

  
  

  In the next 5yrs. i’ll be working hard to access all those files, and will be working hard to recover some of those sunk costs, those forgotten ideas, writings, people, and experiences, that have shaped my life, and that have the potential to work together to help improve the lives of others. 

  
  

  Now…time for lunch.  Need to find some hearty bread and perhaps cheese, and some veggies and dip to get me through the afternoon.

  
  

  -dan

  
  

   

  • 1:21 pm
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