Runners make fluid pace shifts throughout a course based on changing conditions and their own energy reserves. Thoughtful pacing in other areas also calls for frequent reckoning and self-assessment: pauses, brief or extended, when you consider where you are, where you want to end up, and what adjustments you can make in the moment.
Such reckoning shapes day-to-day decisions, but it also bends the larger trajectory of our lives. One of the commonest pacing errors involves shrinking from the discomfort that this assessment brings up. This error, called the “sunk cost fallacy,” happens when you cling so tightly to past choices you’ve made — social, vocational, and otherwise — that dialing back or shifting course feels out of the question.
“Humans want to be seen as consistent,” Snow College psychologist Veronika Tait told me. “Changing course feels like we have to admit we’ve made a mistake. It’s easier sometimes to double down.”
These days, sunk-cost thinking abounds in the political sphere, where those who refuse to deviate from past choices may find themselves allied with racists or insurrectionists. But the sunk cost fallacy also crops up in less dramatic ways that affect the daily pace and substance of our lives. You may embrace a big decision (going to med school, living overseas, getting married), constantly tell yourself and others how much it means to you — then, years down the line, admit that experience is an outgrown hermit-crab shell, one you should have abandoned much earlier.
Correcting the sunk-cost fallacy requires dropping the dead weight of past choices, even those you’ve deeply invested in, and turning resolutely to the future. “Just consider, ‘Would I still be making this choice if I hadn’t made that investment?’” Tait told me. “Focus on what’s going to be best moving forward.”
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With just a month until my book comes out, things are starting to feel real. The Next Big Idea Club — curated by Malcolm Gladwell and Susan Cain, among others — just chose The Art of Pacing as a June “Must-Read” title, which was a lovely unexpected surprise. As ever, pre-ordering means the world to me (and every author!), and if you order from bookshop.org, you can support your favorite independent bookseller into the bargain.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. What questions do you have about the art and practice of pacing? Which pacing strategies have best served you over the years? I hope to weave some of your shared reflections into future posts, and to continue the conversation about how to pace ourselves individually and collectively.