Eric Tian

Sunk costs are a gift from the past.

In the past you spent some resource, usually time or money, on something that cannot be refunded. Now, in the future, you must decide whether to accept this gift from your former self.

A few years ago I was trying to sell my bookshelf on Facebook marketplace. It was my bookshelf for the last two years and I had become quite fond of it. That day I spent over two hours packing the books into boxes, wiping the shelf down, taking multiple photos, writing up an ad then posting it. I listed it as $50.

Within a few days it was clear that nobody was willing to pay that much for a second-hand bookshelf and thus I grudgingly reduced the price to $20. After a week, still no responses. Then $10. Then $5.

The first inquiry I finally got was one month after the initial listing. It was from a lady who wanted to come inspect it at a time I would be in class. I asked my housemate if he would be home at that time to let her in. He said no – he was working. I began to panic at how to manage this situation.

My housemate, noticing my distress, asked how much I was selling it for. $5, I said. He laughed for a long time. And that’s when I realised the ridiculousness of my situation.

If somebody rocked up at my door and told me to sell a second-hand bookshelf for $5 I would say no. $5 is not worth the time and effort. I could try and get creative – sell it at a higher price or build something new perhaps – but the easiest option is just to get rid of it. The best form of productivity is elimination.

But because I had invested all the time and effort into the bookshelf I convinced myself that it had to sell. That somehow, my efforts of cleaning, photo-taking and ad-writing and its sentimental value over the last few years suddenly made it more valuable. This was, of course, delusional.

The problem with sunk costs is that situations and values evolve over time. Maybe a month ago, $50 for the bookshelf was worth the effort of advertising, but not $5. The situation evolved. And maybe a month ago, there was nothing much going on, but now exams are coming up and time is more precious. The values evolved.

Sometimes sunk costs are a gift. Having written 350+ blog posts is a pretty good incentive to keep going: it would be a shame to lose it now. This is where tracking habits and accountability partners can shine. Past investment is a motivator for future effort.

But evaluating sunk costs requires a constant erasing of the past and analysis of the present. If one day I don’t find writing valuable anymore, I would stop writing, regardless of all I had written previously. The same goes for toxic friendships, boring jobs or destructive habits. Holding onto gifts just because of guilt is a tragic irony: you waste even more time by not letting them go. And time, being the only finite resource we have, is the worst thing to waste.

Evaluate your gifts carefully.

One of the most alluring parts of human nature is the spectrum of good and evil, order and chaos, sainthood and the devil. Upon greeting a friend, he or she has the ability to build me up or tear me to shreds and I the same to them. And this ability resets every moment: one day we may have a tendency towards honesty and kindness, another we may be filled with vengeance and spite. It is a miracle that most of us manage to hold it together most of the time, that not all of us break down in the middle of work or a tram or a restaurant possessed by madness.

A few years ago one of my friends asked my group, Do you think people are good or evil? A few of us seemed adamant we were fundamentally good but were tainted by the world, others cheerfully announced we were damned from birth and a few, including me, thought somewhere in between.

But upon reflection, I think the question is not whether people are good or evil, but how far along the spectrum you currently are, because your circumstances may change and send you flying down the other way without your permission. You may think you are evil, but look where Jean Valjean ended up in Les Miserables – redeemed. Or you may think you are good, but was Satan not once an angel of God? Are not the gentlest, kindest people still capable of deceit, torture and rape?

We are simultaneously monsters and angels and sometimes one emerges victorious over the other. And yet we still remain the same being – a beautiful, terrifying enigma.

From The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.”

An old high school friend recently asked me who my closest friends were. I thought for a moment, thinking of who I spend the most time with, who I trust the most and who I have learnt the most from, and I realised that most of my best friends are dead. In fact, most of them don’t even know I exist.

Books, blogs and podcasts give unprecedented access to people and ideas. Through writings and recordings we can learn from the greatest, most influential minds in the world and bear witness to the most amazing literary novels in history. This is why I get so emotional when exploring a bookstore – I sense the legacy and wisdom behind these mountains of pages but lack the time and energy to read them all.

I am fortunate to have some close human connections who I can live life alongside. But alongside my living friends are Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Bukowski, Malcolm Gladwell and dozens other literary and podcast giants, people who are mostly dead and have surely never heard of me, yet still guide and teach me day after day.

It is the greatest privilege.