Stubbornness with a switch

Persistence is needed for almost any noticeable result. The first attempts are often poor, refusals outnumber agreements, and learning looks like a series of proofs of your own inexperience.

In 1772 Benjamin Franklin explained to Joseph Priestley how he made difficult decisions. He divided a sheet into two columns — for and against — added to them over several days, then mentally balanced arguments of different weight. Franklin called this his “moral, or prudential, algebra”. The method promised no correct answer; it kept the most recent impression from playing the whole calculation on its own.

Two centuries later Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer showed the other side of persistence. People carried on with what they had started more often if they had already put in money, time or effort, even when the future benefits were unchanged. In one of their field observations, a more expensive theatre season ticket made its owners attend more plays in the first months. A past price started giving orders to a future evening.

Carrying on, though, is no virtue in itself.

It helps to define the stopping condition in advance:

• a deadline;
• a maximum sum;
• a number of attempts;
• minimum progress;
• a sign that the method should change;
• damage that must not be accepted.

This protects against the sunk cost effect. Time and money already spent don’t come back because we spend more.

There are various ways to stop: drop the goal, change the route, reduce the scale, take a pause, hand the task to someone else, or admit that the original hypothesis was wrong.

Stubbornness is useful while it helps you through temporary resistance. Once it has become the only reason to continue, a switch is already needed.

A stopping condition is needed not only for a single attempt. The plan itself also remains a working hypothesis, not an oath sworn to an earlier version of yourself.

So changing the plan doesn’t always mean weakness. Sometimes it is the only sensible response to new information.

The route should be reconsidered if:

• the goal has changed;
• a key resource has gone;
• the price has risen;
• a better way has appeared;
• the risk turned out to be higher;
• an intermediate result refuted the original assumption.

Constant change, however, can also be a form of avoidance. A new plan is more pleasant than old work: it has no mistakes yet, no fatigue and no boring middle.

Decide in advance which data really justify a revision. Don’t change strategy over every bad day, and don’t keep to it just because it once looked convincing.

Plans exist precisely for an uncertain world. In a fully predictable one a timetable would do.

The same goes for principles. They save you decisions in ordinary circumstances, but they need a clear scope and a way to be revised.

If a person has decided not to take bribes, he doesn’t have to weigh the sum, the risk and his mood afresh each time. The rule protects him at the moment when a convenient exception is especially persuasive.

So principles are not a needless crutch. A crutch is useful when a leg shouldn’t be making a complicated decision under load.

But a rule can go out of date, collide with another rule, or give an absurd result in an exceptional situation.

“Always tell the truth” conflicts with the duty not to hand a person over to his pursuer. “Never break a contract” conflicts with the need to end a dangerous relationship. “Always help your family” conflicts with protection from dependence and exploitation.

A useful principle includes its purpose, its scope, its priority, its known exceptions and a way to revise it.

For example:

I don’t take consumer loans for things that lose value quickly.

That is more precise than “never borrow”, and it leaves room for a loan for treatment or equipment.

Flexibility doesn’t mean having no character. A person stays predictable as long as it is clear which values drive his decisions.

What is dangerous isn’t an exception to a principle but an exception that always coincides with the current advantage.

A stopping condition works only if it was written down before the start. Someone in his third year of litigation with a contractor makes a small decision each time: attend one more hearing, pay the lawyer for one more motion. Compared with the money already spent, every next step looks cheap — and that is exactly why it always looks reasonable. The total grows, while the decision about its limit has never once been taken.

That is why the switch is installed in advance and in a calm state. By the moment it is needed, the person will already have a very convincing explanation of why now is not quite the time to use it.