"Indiana. Indiana. Let it go." The Sunk Costs Fallacy.

In his seminal work on behavioural economics, Misbehaving, Richard H. Thaler tells the story of a man named Vince who paid $1,000 for a tennis club membership. Even after developing tennis elbow, he continued to play. He didn't want to waste the money he had spent. He only gave up when the pain became literally unbearable.

Thaler calls this the Sunk Cost Fallacy, where we persevere with something in an attempt to mentally recoup that money (or time) already spent, or to get perceived value from it. As he points out, that money is gone, no matter what we do. Punishing ourselves in some way through our continuing behaviours doesn't help.

This, in essence, is what behavioural economics is all about. It blends economic analysis with psychology to offer insights into our behaviours, the values we place on things, and the decisions we make as a consequence.

How I fell foul of the Sunk Cost Fallacy

Recently, I have fallen foul of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. A few years ago, I purchased a highly respected and expensive course in a field that wasn't my home turf. I did so because it wasn't long after COVID and my work had been heavily impacted. I thought it would be beneficial to have a backup plan.

I had a year to complete the course. I did nothing. Partly because work picked up. Partly because we had a rollercoaster of a year with miscarriages, family illnesses, and then a pregnancy. Partly because every time I looked at the course, I realised I found it incredibly dull and the learning experience (and lack of any support provided) meant I just couldn't get into it.

At the end of the year, I had a choice. I could let it go, or I could try to retrieve some value from my spent cash. So, I spoke to the 'training provider' (I put that in inverted commas because the 'training' was a series of web pages to read, occasionally clicking on a box to be able to read the text in a different place - but more on that another time) and I persuaded myself that if I swapped the course for another pathway, that would motivate me to get it done.

Eleven months later, and with an 18-month-old, a very busy work schedule, and more family and life stresses, guess how much work I'd done?

I'm sure you got it right. Nada. So, I spoke to my partner, Lou, and decided to go into overdrive. I understand the language of qualifications and what assessments require very well, and I know I can learn FAST! So I started. I ploughed through an assignment, hating every second of it and feeling like I was learning nothing of value to me (that's not to say it might not be valuable to someone else, it's just not my bag).

I began the second assignment late one evening, and I spent much of the night awake with a very unwell baby, thinking about the course and whether I should continue or not. And then, the following morning, I saw an image on my web provider's homepage. It's the one below, of the city of Petra - or Raqmu as it was called by its creators - in Jordan.

It's also the scene used in the best of the Indiana Jones movies, The Last Crusade. (In my humble opinion, but having watched each at least thirty times, I feel well placed to offer up my view.) It serves as the resting place of the Holy Grail. After the Nazis attempt to remove the Grail, the place begins to fall apart and the Grail falls into a freshly opened crevasse in the floor. Indiana Jones tries to save Elsa - his double-crossing love interest in the film - as she scrambles in to attempt to retrieve the Grail, desirous of the everlasting youth and untold powers it would bring. She can’t reach it and slips out of Jones’ grasp and into the abyss below.

Indiana, though, thinks he can reach it. Jones' father (the ever-wonderful Sean Connery) clings onto Indy's hand and repeatedly tries to get his attention, calling him Junior, much to Indy’s disdain. Eventually, Connery says,

"Indiana. Indiana. Let it go."

And that was all it took. Indiana Jones lets go. He gives up on the Holy Grail and takes both of his father’s hands, Connery hauling him out of the crevasse and the pair beating a hasty retreat before the whole place collapses. With the memory of that film scene firmly in my head, I also knew what I was going to do about my course. Let it go.

What can you learn from the Sunk Cost Fallacy in relation to your health and fitness?

The key thing is to learn to let go of things that aren’t working or don’t feel right. Yes, you may have spent a lot of money on that gym membership but you’re not going, so if you know deep down that’s not going to change, let it go.

You can decide not to go back to that diet ‘one more time’, if you know in your gut (no pun intended) that you don’t really like it.

That’s not to say you should always give up. If something feels like the right path but you just need to do some tweaking and try again, that’s cool. But don’t keep going out of a sense of guilt that you’ve wasted good money or time.

Instead, imagine those smooth Scottish tones of Sean Connery. Let it go, take his hands and let him help you out of that hole that you’ve been stuck in for some time.

Our journey to more sustainable living: What's gone well? And what can we still improve?

Climate change has been at the forefront of everyone’s minds in the past few years and the spotlight has been on it even more this past few weeks as the governments of the world came together for the COP26 summit.

I’ve always loved being out in nature but, I’ll be honest, my awareness about the importance of living more sustainably and my drive to do so have only really developed in the past few years. For me, you won’t be surprised to learn that it began with health and wellbeing. Keeping fit and healthy, and helping you and others to do the same has been my driving force throughout my adult life. As I began to take people out on adventures in the wilder places around the UK, I noticed how refreshed, energised, relaxed, and happy they became as a result. Nature had incredible powers.

Inextricably linked

Around the same time, I also started to realise how closely bound together our own health and wellbeing was with that of our planet’s. Our food comes from the soil and from the sea. Damage those and we have a big problem. I began to understand how everything in nature lives in harmony, in balance you could say. We need bees and other insects to pollinate our food. In fact, we require all creatures to sustain the web of life and the delicately balanced food chain. It is this complex but amazing interaction between every living thing on earth that sustains the great biodiversity of our planet and ensures that we have air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, and resources for shelter, clothing and everything else we need. The loss of just one tiny element can be catastrophic to our own wellbeing.

I also began to read the research on the impact that time in nature can have on not just your physical wellbeing, but your mental wellbeing too. It blew me away!

It was at this point that I begin to think seriously about my own habits feed into this cycle that damages our soil, our seas, our natural environment and our air. I started to think about how I shopped, how I travelled, how I ate and how much I consumed. I have never been in a position to preach on this topic, and I know from experience when it comes to health and fitness that preaching tends not to help others to change anyway. Instead, I set out to see if I could l change my habits in a way that would protect the environment, to share my journey with you all, and to see if I could find out just how much a difference each of us could make through the development of tiny new habits. I knew well that tiny changes sustained over time could massively impact someone’s health for the better, so I assumed that tiny changes made by enough of us over time could help our planet for the better too.

Do tiny habits make a difference?

I really think they do and here’s why. I recently read Chris Packham and Meg McCubbin’s book, Back to Nature: How To Love Life, and Save It. In it, they explain that the total area covered by our gardens in the UK is 432,964 hectares, an area one fifth the size of Wales and bigger than the Norfolk Broads, Exmoor, Dartmoor, and Lake District National Parks put together. If each single household did something in their garden to better protect wildlife, just imagine what an imapct that could have. If each household grew just a tiny portion of food, what a banquet that would be. If each household composted their food waste, just think how big a reduction in waste that would equate to.

Let’s take another example. How about litter? The sorry stats from Keep Britain Tidy are that two million pieces of litter are dropped in the UK every day. But there are nearly 70 million people on our island. Imagine if just one person in thirty picked up a single piece of litter each day, then 2.33 million pieces would be removed from our streets and parks. Put another way, there’d be 330,000 less pieces than there were the day before. Over two million less in a single week. The tide would start to turn.

What have we changed?

Now you know my motivations for change, I thought I’d share with you what we’ve actually tried to do to play our part and also have a look at where we can still improve in future.

Here’s what we did:

Limit waste to the bare minimum

• Get rid of the waste bins in the house so that nothing went into general waste, even by accident.

• Take plastic bags and soft plastics to our local Tesco where they can both be recycled. (This scheme was originally trialled in Bristol and then extended to the entire South-West. Hopefully it will soon be nationwide.)

• Recycle everything else, plastic bottles, paper, cardboard, tins, the usual things that we can all recycle.

• At present, the only waste that ever goes into the black bin is cat litter and anything that comes in packaging that we can’t recycle, although we try our best to purchase things where this doesn’t happen. I think we’ve only put the black bin out for collection a handful of times this year!

Eat less meat

• Stop buying meat from supermarkets for dinners at home. A simple rule that has allowed us to no if we’re sticking to the plan or not. Instead we have fish or vege options.

• Instead, we only eat meat occasionally, either when we visit local farmshops and can source local, organically farmed produce, or if we head out for a meal when we treat ourselves sometimes.

Be energy conscious

• Switch off all appliances, plugs and lights when they’re not in use.

• Keep an eye on the smart meter and set timers for the hot water tank and central heating. Done together, we’ve saved a few hundred pounds a year off our bills.

• Minimise the use of water. We use an eco-friendly spray with a dry cloth to clean the van instead of a hosepipe and make sure we don’t leave taps running. We have a water butt for the allotment and re-use water we collect from a dehumidifer for the house plants.

Choose better products

• We clean the vast majority of things in the house with hot water, distilled vinegar, baking soda, and lemon juice. Anything else we buy eco-friendly products from companies like Ethical Superstore and e-cover.

• The same goes for washing powder and washing up liquid, buying products without the harmful chemicals in.

• We’ve started to apply this to bathroom stuff too, including beeswax hairwax and shampoo bars.

Buy more sustainably

• Whenever we need something now, first off I’ll check for secondhand options on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, or Gumtree

• For things like books, I’ll check out World of Books for secondhand options (they do free delivery)!

• If we can’t get things secondhand, we’ll look for options with sustainable credentials.

What can we do better?

There are some priority areas to work on in future to live even more sustainably:

1. Decrease our impact from car use. At present we have two vehicles. We can both be off in different places for work on the same day and we live in a rural area. Lou’s car is newer and a low emissions model but, when it’s possible, swapping the older van for a more planet-friendly model or even dropping back down to one vehicle will be a big step. In the meantime, we minimise travel by walking to the local shops and use the car more than the van.

2. Purchase litter pickers and get out there! I have my eye on some made from recycled fishing nets that have washed up on our coastlines. They’ll be in stock in the coming weeks and then we’re going to get out there like a pair of Wombles and start making a difference!

3. Buy even better. We can probably still improve on our impact with bathroom products by finding a good eco-friendly conditioner bar and we can continue to try to reduce the amount of packaged food we buy, even if it does all go back to be recycled.

4. Continue to use the fire sparingly over winter. We only lit it occasionally last winter just for the nice cosy feel it brings to the lounge, but we don’t really need to light it, the heating in the house is more than adequate.

5. When we do eventually get our own place again, our biggest impact will probably come from looking into heat pumps, better insulation, water butts attached to all of the drain pipes and the like.

What do you do? And do you have any tips for how we could do more?

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and learn about what you do to try to live sustainably, plus any ideas you have for us on how we can improve our lifestyle to make a difference to our planet’s wellbeing.

Fuel for thought: What the petrol 'crisis' can teach you about forming healthy habits.

We had to travel quite far to find some petrol last week! ;-)

Sometimes, things happen during the week that spark my brain to life. (Not very often, I'll admit, but it does happen!) And, when it does, I can instantly see a great connection between whatever it is and the important messages that I try to pass on to you in my newsletters and blogs about how to make your healthy habits stick.

Bizarrely, you might think, this week's fuel 'crisis' was one such moment. Here's how my little grey cells connected a lack of petrol and diesel with lasting weight loss, improved energy levels, better sleep, less stress, increased strength and all-round wellbeing for you.

1. URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!!!!!!!!

We take action when things are urgent. When they need our attention right away. That's why we got on board with the vast changes to life that we felt were required at the start of the virus. That's why people raided petrol station forecourts this week like packs of hungry wolves.

And, it's also why we're often so slow to react when it comes to things like the environment or our own health and wellbeing. These changes happen slowly over time. So slowly, in fact, that we barely notice them. And so, when it comes to taking action, it feels like something we can put off until tomorrow. We have time for that, but there's more urgent stuff that needs attending to first.

How can you use this to your advantage?

In reality, unless you've had a major health scare, it's difficult to make prioritising your wellbeing feel urgent. But, there are some things you can do to help bump it up the priority list:

• Set frequent short-term goals with fixed timelines/dates in which to achieve them. Yes, the big goal may be some time away, but breaking it down into more bite-size chunks helps to keep it higher on your list of priorities.

• Be accountable to someone for the progress you're making on these short-term goals. If you have to report in, this creates a sense of urgency, much like projects at work with set dates and the need for weekly updates to your boss. You get these things done!

2. DON'T PANIC BUY!

A message you've heard many times in this past week. But, what do people do? They top up their tanks, just in case. Sometimes because they are very much panic buying. Sometimes because they think, 'well, I best fill up anyway because everyone else is stupid and they definitely will.'

Our brains just don't really compute the word 'don't'.

Whatever you do, don't think about pink elephants. So what did you just do? You imagined Dumbo in a nice shade of candyfloss pink, didn't you? For your brain to process the negative 'don't', it has to imagine the very action it's being told not to perform.

As I heard those messages this week, all it brought to mind for me was Private Jones in Dad's Army saying, 'Don't panic Mr Manewaring' in that increasingly agitated manner of his, working himself up into a lather and a state of absolute panic. The irony wasn't lost on me.

How can you use this to your advantage?

When you're trying to improve your health and fitness, focus on the habits you want to form, rather than those you don't.

Instead of saying, 'I'm not going to eat biscuits', try 'This week, I'm going to snack on fruit, nuts and seeds during my breaks at work.' Rather than saying, 'I don't want to feel tired anymore', try, 'I want to have the energy to get through my day and still have time to do something fun with the kids in the evening.'

3. IT'S REALLY NOT A BIG DEAL. THAT'S WHY WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT THE FRONT PAGE HEADLINE EVERY DAY AND START EVERY NEWS BULLETIN WITH IT!

Think logically for a second. We're told that it's all fine, that there's plenty of fuel to go around if we all just fill up normally. But, at the same time, we're informed every day that it's a 'crisis'. I don't know about you, but if something is a crisis, then I imagine that it must be pretty bad.

It's always in the news. We're reminded of it constantly. Why would they keep going on about it if it wasn't a problem, right? I'm sure the media knows this, and they also know that they can essentially create a story by reporting it before it's even happened. They talk about it enough, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How can you use this to your advantage?

You want to do something. Find a way to remind yourself of it constantly. Keep it in the forefront of your mind and you can make it happen.

Very often, people assume that they fail with their health and fitness goals because they weren't motivated enough. It obviously wasn't that important. But it probably was. It's just that every day their brain got deluged with millions of pieces of information and endless life and work and family tasks that they had to do as well, many of which were 'crises' or needed urgent attention. Their goals simply got pushed to the back of their minds.

In order to keep them at the front, you have to create constant reminders. Alarms on your phone telling you to drink some water. Meetings in your diary for gym sessions. Post-it notes on the kettle or laptop informing you to have a piece of fruit.

You can think like any good media outlet. Keep your health and fitness story front-page news in your life and you'll make the headlines you want to read.