Why You Shouldn’t Finish Something That Has No Value

I’m glad I’m not the only one skeptical about the whole of The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (aff). Over at the Web Worker Daily, Jackson West  wrote Rethink Your Relationship to Work: Ideas from The 4-Hour Work Week.

The thing that struck me most about the summary was Practicing the Art of Non-Finishing. “[If] the value isn’t there, you shouldn’t continue just because you’ve already put time in. That time is what economists know as a ’sunk cost.’”

Good ol’ sunk cost. You can’t get it [time, money, etc] back, and it’s best to stop yourself before you get seriously off track. As a friend of mine once said, if you are making a cake and drop an egg, you don’t respond by throwing the rest of the eggs on the floor. You keep going, acknowledging the spill, and move forward with the rest of the eggs.

It gets back to the idea of should you be doing what you are doing? Is the task worthy of your attention? If it’s not, jettison the thing, the sooner the better.