188-Avoiding the Sunk Cost Fallacy by Applying Zero-Based Thinking

Radical Personal Finance

Joshua J. Sheats, MSFS, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CASL, RHU, REBC, CAP

Self-improvement, Business, Education, Investing

4.2 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2015

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Years ago, I learned an extremely valuable thinking process from Brian Tracy called Zero-Based Thinking. Today, I share it with you.

Here's the question: Is there anything in your life that, knowning what you now know, you wouldn't get into again today if you had to do it over?

If the answer is yes, then you follow up with these questions: How do I get out? How fast do I get out?

By consistently applying this question to every area of our lives, we can avoid much of the impact of the sunk cost fallacy. As humans, we tend to want to keep doing something because we've invested a lot of time, money, or emtion into it in the past.

But, for the most part, those costs are gone. They're sunk. You can't recover them.

Rather, you have to zero the decision out, ignore the past, take the information you have today and determine if you want to continue what you're doing.

This type of thinking can be extremely challenging and freeing.

I hope it's a useful concept to you!

Joshua

Support Radical Personal Finance! http://radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Do you get at least five cents of value from each and every episode of radical
0:04.3	personal finance? If so consider coming to radical personal finance.com
0:08.7	slash patron and signing up to support the show at a dollar per month.
0:14.0	That's the minimum level of patronage and thank you for the 31 of you who support the show in that way.
0:20.0	In exchange for a dollar a month, you get access to a 20 minute video presentation I've put together called the Framework for Wealth,
0:27.0	exclusive behind the scenes access on the patron-only activity feed, and also first dibs and discounts on new courses and
0:35.1	products that I'll be developing in the future. To each and every one of you who
0:38.5	support the show, thank you. And if you'd like to support the show come to radical personal finance.com
0:44.0	slash patron. Today we're going to dig into something that I hope will be very
0:49.9	helpful to you and here's the question. Is there anything in your life which
0:56.1	knowing what you now know you wouldn't get into again today if you had to do it
1:02.3	over?
1:05.0	Chew on that for a moment. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your
1:26.7	host. Thank you for being here. Today we talk about Zero-based thinking.
1:33.0	You could probably shut the show off right now
1:34.6	if you got that question and grasped the importance of it.
1:38.6	But I'm going to spend at least a few minutes
1:41.1	pulling that apart, unpacking it, and giving you some ideas for how to apply
1:45.4	zero-based thinking to your own life. The primary meaning behind this concept and behind today's show is to give you a useful question to try to sort out what's important to you and what's not important to you.
2:06.0	That's one of the biggest challenges that we have because once we get clarity on
2:09.8	exactly what we want, then we're able to put a plan in place and start working that plan day by day.
2:16.9	But a lot of times it's more challenging to gain clarity than perhaps we think it should be.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Joshua J. Sheats, MSFS, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CASL, RHU, REBC, CAP, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Joshua J. Sheats, MSFS, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CASL, RHU, REBC, CAP and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.