Overcome These 4 Biases for a Better 2019

And Stop Wasting Your Time on Bad Investments.

Court Litigation

A concerned citizens brigade is suing our town council and school board. It’s the latest tactic of a poorly thrown together strategy to prevent the town from building a new elementary school.

They’re upset over the potential increase in tax dollars. So they decided to sue the town.

In their effort to prevent a marginal tax increase, they’ve decided to spend ten times that amount for court litigation. I’m not sure if they realize their tax dollars will also be paying for the town’s defense.One more instance of a poorly managed campaign that’s only succeeded in guaranteeing their own failure. A strategy that to date has included belittling those with decision-making authority, promulgating alternative fact sheets, and one particularly boisterous woman who drew comparisons between her attempts to block the school development and her grandfather’s role in smuggling Jews out of Nazi Germany.

Yeah, that actually happened.

And while this merry band of self-deluded crazies may be on the far end of the irrationality range, their mistakes are similar to many of the pitfalls that plague the rest of us.

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More pronounced and ridiculous perhaps, but similar all the same.

Faced with repeated defeats and setbacks, they had two choices: move on with their lives or double down on their investment.

And despite the overwhelming amount of evidence showing them the futility of their efforts, they elected to continue down a path which is now completely contrary to their original purpose.

As we get ready to start 2019, complete with dozens of goals and aspirations for accomplishing more, where are we pursuing things that are no longer worth the effort. How often do we become so blind to the path that we’re on, we don’t stop to consider whether it’s still the right one. In the wise words of Seth Godin,

“If you’re trying to succeed in a job or a relationship or at a task, you’re either moving forward, falling behind, or standing still. There are only three choices.”

So instead of taking on a dozen new resolutions in 2019, a more effective investment would be to consider which current efforts are no longer delivering value. We all have areas where we’re investing our time, energy, and money without seeing a worthwhile return. If we can cut these out, we’ll have much less constraints on focusing our efforts towards something that will yield a meaningful impact.

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