a8b.io

It just occured to me today that the sunk cost fallacy applies to finding solutions to problems. The more you invest in a particular route the more emotional you get about making that particular way work.

I spent hours yesterday trying to fix an issue with routing on next.js with custom hosts. In the end I was so invested in trying to make it work through cloud front that I only investigated that path. Maybe there's something there about wanting to validate my previous decisions or intuition as correct. And to be fair there definitely is a way to make it work down that path. But as I was on a walk just now, and spending about the first 20 minutes feeling upset and frustrated at how things are going and looping over those feelings, I just stopped in the middle of the walk and pulled out my phone. I was going to solve it. So with that in mind, thinking how do I solve this, not how do I make this work. I went down a completely different path and found a solution in like 2 minutes. I'm not discounting the importance of mental space in problem solving. That solution may have been brewing subconsciously. But I was surprised how quickly I found it when I realized what I was clinging to.

It's funny that when I tell myself I'm going to solve this I immediately widen my options. Which tells me when I'm sitting on my computer, worried about making something work that I'm more interested in those emotions of frustration, and proving/disproving something that is at the root of that frustration, than actually trying to solve the problem. Interestingly when I have a deadline I tend to force myself into the state of letting go of potential solution paths quite readily.

What's the best thing to do about all this? Probably not enforce artificial deadlines all over the place, though I do that sometimes. But that thing I've been working on lately to notice my emotions as they're happening. If I notice the frustration I can feel it and let it be and move on instead of becoming stuck on proving something. Once I've let go of it, I can come back and find a solution.

Another thing that occurs to me is to investigate multiple possible solutions early on rather than diving into just one. That's kind of hard because 90% of the time the solution lies perfectly fine down that first path, and that kind of feels like I'm putting a crutch in place of my ability to let go when I need to.

A note to myself: Write about over engineering when those thoughts are fully formed 💭