It Isn't What You Do. It Is Where You Are Now

This is an unusual post and it borrows liberally from other ones.  

On page six of The Washington Post dated 25 October 1911, in an article titled 'Letting Bryan Down Easy' was a quote that would go on to become a classic, relevant for all times, sensible and, hence, contrary to our nature (I mean that).  The quote read: "Nor would a wise man, seeing that he was in a hole, go to work and blindly dig it deeper..."

Seventy two years later, in 1983, a politician named Bill Brock remixed this: "Let me tell you about the law of holes: If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."  

This is the form in which the First Law of Holes has taken shape today.  

(as an aside, there is a Second Law too: "When you stop digging, you are still in a hole.")

This may seem inane and perhaps trite (i.e., boring because it has been quoted so often), but it is true, because the realisation that I am in a hole is one that 

- I might not want to accept (Denial) or 

- might want to fight away (Defiance) or 

- explain away saying that it isn't my fault at all and I can recover lost ground (Defense) or 

- wish away by telling myself to think about it tomorrow (Delay), 

...among other things.  

And I am busy digging, so I continue (perhaps I love the exercise). 

For an excellent case study of how this happens, do read Jordan RothStein's case study of a software project that kept growing.....

https://medium.com/king-tide/the-first-rule-of-holes-6f24b19f3e47

Now for the strategic thinking lesson from the case study (in his words):  The project isn’t working out, let it go, and focus on what is working.  

The Big Lesson: Letting go is a strategic option that should rarely, if ever, be kept aside.

(ps: he has another Law of Holes added, by the way: adding more shovels doesn't help you dig faster.)

In sociology, irrational escalation of commitment or commitment bias describe similar behaviors. The phenomenon and the sentiment underlying them are reflected in such proverbial images as "throwing good money after bad", or "In for a penny, in for a pound" (which is another term for the sunk cost bias), or "It's never the wrong time to make the right decision" - the last phrase suggesting that climbing out of the hole, with an apology and suitable contrition, is often the best course of action.  

There are 2 reasons from this post:  

Reason 1: for some years now, I have been struggling with keeping an otter conservation effort running in the Brahmagiri hill range: more misses than hits, indifference from local stakeholders and the logistical problems on the ground.  When I decided in February this year - more in a fit of petulance - to give the project a break (for a year, two years or more.....), the feeling of relief swept over, of time available to do things I would love to do much more, of not having a feeling of two steps forward and three in retreat.  

And now I wonder why it took so long to look in that convex mirror.......

Reason 2: Have you read this rather unusual book?  Fredrik Backman's books are so unusual anyway.  

Review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49127718-anxious-people

And somewhere in this book, in a page I read last evening, is this paragraph on digging, deep within the human conscious mind: 

"....One of the most human things about anxiety is that we try to cure chaos with chaos.  Someone who has got themselves into a catastrophic situation rarely retreats from it, we are far more inclined to carry on even faster.  We have created lives where we can watch other people crash into the wall but still hope that somehow we are going to pass straight through it.  The closer we get, the more confidently we believe that some unlikely solution is miraculously going to save us, while everyone watching us is just waiting for the crash."

And I have stories to tell....of men neck down in debt, borrowing more on senseless terms to pay the earlier lenders (and does the name Satyam ring a bell?), of private equity funds putting in good money after bad, of men (again) who run an airline to the ground and - to protect their egos - buy another one that was run to the ground, which adds up to two birds on the ground, none in the bush, of families believing that their child will eventually turn out a genius when evidence shows sandy soil between the ears.....

But I will stop.  You get the picture.