On Its Head

Whenever something isn’t working, you have no incentive to protect it. Our inclination is to yield to the sunk cost fallacy and think that anything we’ve put effort into is worth shielding, but that just prevents us from getting to the root of the problem. No matter how much you’ve worked on something, if it isn’t functioning as intended then it’s worthless – so you might as well flip it on its head. Break it; shuffle it up and put it back together. You have nothing to lose, no matter how much your brain stings at the idea. But you might gain something. You might actually fix it, or you might realize how to build it better. Or you might just break the hold it has on you, which is worth everything.