It sounds like you only take the utility of finishing both projects when deciding whether to switch and disregard the effort required for finishing. Rather than deciding to work on a project with the highest final utility, pick the activity with the highest ‘utility production rate’. So if your project A is three-quarters finished then you won’t switch even if the new project seems twice as shiny.
You could try to make your existent debiasing habit conditional. For example allow it to run only when your circumstances changed in a way that can significantly affect the utility of finishing your current project or when the new project idea depends on some novel information or insight that you wouldn’t be able to come up with when you originally embarked on the first project. In other cases happily embrace the instinctual flinch against ‘wasted effort’.
It’s basic economics. We should work to maximize marginal utility per unit input cost, or bang for the buck. Once a project is half completed, you’ve got half as much work to do to collect on the value of the project. Nowhere in the analysis do I see any cognizance of the cost of completion, and actually delivering the goods.
The sunk cost issue is a red herring distracting you from your actual error.
Just to be thorough, one should not forget about future discounting. Therefore, a project that is half-finished might be worth more than a newly discovered project that would take the same total amount of time and produce slightly more than double the payout, on account of the first project finishing earlier and earning interest.
It sounds like you only take the utility of finishing both projects when deciding whether to switch and disregard the effort required for finishing. Rather than deciding to work on a project with the highest final utility, pick the activity with the highest ‘utility production rate’. So if your project A is three-quarters finished then you won’t switch even if the new project seems twice as shiny.
You could try to make your existent debiasing habit conditional. For example allow it to run only when your circumstances changed in a way that can significantly affect the utility of finishing your current project or when the new project idea depends on some novel information or insight that you wouldn’t be able to come up with when you originally embarked on the first project. In other cases happily embrace the instinctual flinch against ‘wasted effort’.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
It’s basic economics. We should work to maximize marginal utility per unit input cost, or bang for the buck. Once a project is half completed, you’ve got half as much work to do to collect on the value of the project. Nowhere in the analysis do I see any cognizance of the cost of completion, and actually delivering the goods.
The sunk cost issue is a red herring distracting you from your actual error.
Just to be thorough, one should not forget about future discounting. Therefore, a project that is half-finished might be worth more than a newly discovered project that would take the same total amount of time and produce slightly more than double the payout, on account of the first project finishing earlier and earning interest.