Quotes About Change

The status quo represents a mental account that we already have open, which has sunk costs associated with it, the time, money, or effort that has already been put into the way we've been doing things. Closing that account by switching to a new option can make us feel like we are wasting those resources we have already spent. We also become endowed to the status quo, taking ownership of the decisions that have kept us in that groove and anything we have created along the way.

To pursue radical ideas, he has to be a radical loss-cutter. Every dollar they save by getting to no quickly is a dollar they can spend on something that could change the world.

We are much more bothered by the downside potential of changing course than we are by the downside potential of staying on the path we're already on.

Charles Duhigg, in The Power of Habit, offers the golden rule of habit change—that the best way to deal with a habit is to respect the habit loop: "To change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.

A higher chance of failing is more tolerated on paths that don't rock the boat. After all, what's the go-to defense in a postmortem after we make a decision that doesn't work out? "I followed procedure," or "I stuck with the status quo," or "I made the consensus choice.

Wrapped within all these forces interfering with quitting decisions is that we do not think of sticking with the status quo as an active decision in the same way that we view switching as one. We are much more concerned with errors of commission than errors of omission (failures to act). We're more wary of "causing" a bad outcome by acting than "letting it happen" through inaction.

Switching to something, like a new job or a new major or a new relationship or a new business strategy, is perceived as a new decision, and an active one. In contrast, we don't really view the choice to stick with the status quo as a decision at all.

That's why, if I had to skill somebody up to get them to be a better decision-maker, quitting is the primary skill I would choose, because the option to quit is what allows you to react to that changing landscape.

Of course, the world is uncertain and the world does change. That means that our goals ought to change in response. But the goals we set are remarkably unresponsive to new information.

I'm certainly not knocking these books. But whether you say "pivot" or "moving on to the next chapter" or "strategic redeployment," all of these things are, by definition, quitting. After all, stripped of its negative connotation, quitting is merely the choice to stop something that you have started.

When your identity is what you do, then what you do becomes hard to abandon, because it means quitting who you are.

We have the intuition that when the world tells us our beliefs need updating, when new information conflicts with a belief we have, we will resolve that conflict by changing our belief. But all too often, like the cult members, we rationalize away the new information so we can defend our prior belief and stick to it.

But the goals we set are remarkably unresponsive to new information.

Small changes in how much you notice the luck that you would otherwise overlook will have a big influence on the way your life turns out. Those small changes act like compounding interest that pays big dividends on your future decision-making.

When it comes to quitting, the most painful thing to quit is who you are.

The goal becomes fixed even as all the inputs that led to choosing that particular goal evolve. The conditions in the world change. Our knowledge changes. The weights we attach to the benefits and costs change. Our preferences and values change.

As these things change, if we were to rerun the cost-benefit analysis, the output would surely be different. But we don't rerun it.

The challenge is not to change the way our brains operate but to figure out how to work within the limitations of the brains we already have. Being aware of our irrational behavior and wanting to change is not enough, in the same way that knowing that you are looking at a visual illusion is not enough to make the illusion go away.

It's not just that we need to set more flexible goals. We ourselves also need to be more flexible in the way we evaluate success and failure.

By asking her if she would be happier in the new job more than 0% of the time, that helped her see that there was some certainty in changing jobs. Specifically, she had a better chance of getting to where she wanted to go faster if she switched. In that moment, she realized the devil that she didn't know was the better choice.

Et rien ne peut faire que ce qui a été vécu dans un monde, celui d'avant 1968, et condamné par les règles de ce monde, puisse changer radicalement de sens dans un autre monde. Cela reste un événement sexuel singulier, dont la honte est insoluble dans la doxa du nouveau siècle.

El hecho de que la forma en la que yo viví la experiencia del aborto, la clandestinidad, forme parte del pasado no me parece un motivo válido para que se siga ocultando.

Aqueles que admiravam as nossas coisas velhas, a bomba d'água no pátio, as casas normandas com viga de madeira aparente, certamente queriam nos impedir de ter o que eles já tinham, eles que eram tão modernos, com água na torneira e uma casa branca.

Moments de lucidité. Il est évident que S. en a marre de moi. Inversement : le 12 mai, sa passion pour moi était évidente.