Why you get stuck on your ass

I find this to be true:

Status quo bias is the preference for maintaining one's current situation and opposing actions that may change the state of affairs.

You know…

Keeping the same job

Staying with the same partner

Taking the same route to work

Cooking more or less the same dinners

The list goes on.

I did some reading on why we lean towards the status quo. It kind of makes sense when you think about it and a lot of it boils down to most people being loss averse.

Lemme explain.

To begin with: loss aversion is simply saying that the pain of losing 10 is higher than the pleasure of gaining 10.

Meaning we will avoid situations where we can lose 10.

Going back to status quo bias, say your job sucks and you think “I should get another job”.

A feeling quite many of us have but very few actually get another job. We get stuck.

We get stuck because of a cocktail of status quo bias and loss aversion.

Simply this:

Staying at your current job is not seen as a decision. On the other hand, changing jobs is seen as making a decision.

Same as taking another way to work feels like a decision.

You’re doing something that’s not normal. You decide to do something else.

So here’s the core of the problem: since doing something new feels like a decision and we are loss averse, we avoid doing something new.

The new thing can be good. But it can also be bad. We can win 10 or lose 10. We can get to work faster, but it can also take 15 minutes longer. The new job can be great, but the new boss might be an a-hole.

We risk getting a loss when doing things we aren’t already doing.

But…

There’s a problem at play here.

Doing the same thing IS a decision. You decide to take the same way to work. You decide to stay at your current job.

You decide to do the same thing, or you decide to do something else.

Get this in your head: all actions you take come from a decision.

This is part of why we get stuck in bad situations. Situations like “I should get another job”, or “I should get a divorce”.

Get off your ass.

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