Let it go.
Sometimes success won't happen. Learn when to switch your attention to something new.
When the first wave of the pandemic calmed down in Spain, we were allowed to spend more time outside. We were promised there wouldn’t be any police helicopters asking us to please get down from the upper floor shared terraces of buildings.
I didn’t want to spend much time outside, though. I remember many people eager to party, but I had grown so used to watching movies and eating good food at home that it became a great comfort zone. Don’t get me wrong, I still remember the first concert I went to a few months later as a special occasion, but I also have fond memories of enjoying life at home just because I wanted to — not because I was being told to stay at home like before.
My housemate’s girlfriend came over a few times per week to spend the night with him. One night she suggested watching a movie together after dinner: Frozen 3. I laughed at her proposal but they both insisted it’d be great. I accepted my fate and went ahead with it. It got me so emotional. Top 10 movie experiences of my life.
I guess growing up as a boy has those things: you are taught to block your emotions by so many external forces that at some point a movie for children just breaks you up (and hopefully helps you heal). Or maybe the book I’m reading from Bell Hooks is hitting too hard and I just had a normal movie-watching experience that I’m remembering more strongly now.
Anyway, Frozen 3 was amazing. The music, the colours, the younger sister dealing with her fears while singing… Who wouldn’t want that for them? Since then, I’ve half-jokingly grown to be a supporter of this Disney franchise targeted at girls by arguing that they are great movies for everyone. Who doesn’t want to feel?
That would be a rhetorical question if you thought that everyone wants to feel, but it turns out that’s not the case. Especially if there’s something in your life going so wrong that you are about to lose someone for a while. Even more so if you recently lost them, but I want to focus on the pre-grief stage here. The pain of acceptance can be so strong that many times you just proceed as normal when you know things are not good and not gonna get back to good.
But this is a ‘business, product and tech’ newsletter, so let’s talk about professional situations where grief is knocking on the door.
Maybe you invested a lot of money on a project that you thought had a validated marketing strategy but the numbers are not working out
Maybe you want to part ways with a company and group of coworkers that have given you many good moments but are not a fit for your needs any longer
Maybe you are about to lose a big customer that is giving you lots of revenue.
How can you let them go?
I love plants. I just realised I hadn’t watered our houseplants in a few days so I’ve taken the chance to count them. We have 20 houseplants at home. Some are very big and beautiful and others are small but strong. Almost all of them have some backstory. Many are gifts from other people. Some are gifts my girlfriend and I gave to each other before we were living together. One of them is the grandchild of a plant that my grandmother used to own. I like that one because I can forget about it for days and it doesn’t matter much. It’s a pretty autonomous plant. Although it’s not as versatile as a Pothos aka Devil’s Ivy.
We have three Pothos at home because they are amazing. They can live and grow just on water, without any soil, but they also do nicely with soil. You never feel the need to transplant them to bigger pots. They just keep growing, climbing down your furniture and pruning themselves when they need to.
They freakin prune themselves. I’m no biologist and I don’t know much about plants. I refuse to learn in a weird “This is the aspect of my life I don’t want to study anything about”. What I’ve seen however is my three pothos grow for years, and I empirically know that whenever they are not getting enough light they just kill a few leaves. They let them go yellow, dry out and eventually fall.
This is not your typical ‘fallen leaves’ phenomenon where a whole tree lets the leaves fall. This process is selective. You can help the Pothos prune itself by easily pulling off any yellow leaves. It doesn’t require any force and it goes great for them. They empower an ‘iterative mindset’ although they are just a plan.
I just googled “Pothos pruning” and saw a lot of pictures of people actively pruning their Pothos with pruning scissors. I guess that can help them grow even stronger, but as I said above I don’t want any kind of digital relationship with my plants so I try to learn organically from observation and I see that you don’t need to prune them. They prune themselves.
I hope you know what I’m hinting at: how do you prune yourself, your company, your product, or your base of customers? Well, every situation in that list involves human people so it’s gonna be hard. You gotta let yourself feel it, and then let it go.
Much has been written about the sunk costs fallacy. I don’t have any specific great articles on the topic that I can link here so let me just prompt ChatGPT, our favourite compiler of standard information, on “Why is caring about sunk costs stupid and thus considered a fallacy?”.
Chat GPT’s response:
Caring too much about sunk costs is considered irrational and is known as the "sunk cost fallacy." This fallacy occurs when people continue a behaviour or endeavour as a result of previously invested resources (time, money, or effort), even when persisting is not the best course of action. The reasons why caring about sunk costs is considered unwise include:
Irrelevance to Future Decisions: Sunk costs are irrecoverable and should not influence future decisions. Rational decision-making involves considering the future benefits and costs of choices, not the irrecoverable investments made in the past.
Escalation of Commitment: The sunk cost fallacy can lead to an escalation of commitment, where individuals or organizations continue to invest in a failing project due to the amount already spent, rather than cutting their losses. This can lead to even greater losses.
[…]
Emotional Investment Over Logic: The sunk cost fallacy often involves emotional investment overriding logical analysis. People may feel a sense of responsibility or attachment to what they have invested in, making it harder to let go, even when evidence suggests that continuing would be detrimental.
Opportunity Cost Neglect: By continuing to invest in a losing proposition because of sunk costs, individuals and organizations may ignore the opportunity cost of not pursuing better alternatives. The resources tied up in the failing venture could be used more effectively elsewhere, leading to missed opportunities.
Waste of Resources: Persisting in an endeavor primarily because of the sunk costs involved can lead to further waste of resources, exacerbating the initial loss instead of minimizing future losses and maximizing future gains.
Understanding and avoiding the sunk cost fallacy is crucial for making efficient and effective decisions, both in personal life and in business contexts. It encourages a focus on future potential rather than past expenditures, leading to better decision-making outcomes.
TL;DR: Let it go
Bonus: Me trying to prompt GPT to say “Let it go”.
