Seth Godin in this post ‘Sunk costs, creativity and your Practice‘ provides a need reflection on the fact that creative endeavors entail leaving behind things we have invested in learning in the past – in effect, overcoming the sunk cost syndrome.
“We hold on to the old competencies and our hard-earned status roles far longer than we should. The only way to be creative is to do something new, and the path to something new requires leaving something else behind.”
Moreover, Seth Godin insists that this capability of leaving stuff behind that we have invested in learning or practicing is an actual capability in itself, that should be practiced regularly for the creative person.
I do believe that what we have made the effort to learn in the past will never be lost and will be useful in hindsight, but that we certainly should not be burdened by it when we start something new. This is not easy and certainly requires a lot of experience and thoughts.
Creativity requires overcoming what we know to produce something new to the world, and therefore requires overcoming the sunk cost syndrome as a matter of habit. Let’s practice!
