In this one, I’m going to talk about two seemingly unrelated stories from two different times of my life. There are probably a thousand different lessons you could draw from how these stories came together, but I’m just focusing on one— which happens to be one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned.
The first story is from the middle of lockdown. Call of Duty Warzone had just come out, and I was addicted. Like, 12-hours-a-day addicted. It was my escape, but after a while, things started going downhill. To give you some context, back then, there was no anti-cheat, and the SBMM (skill-based matchmaking) was brutal. Even if you were just slightly better than average, you’d be up against a cheater in almost every lobby. It was like running into a wall over and over, and it made playing unbearable. Even the streamers were bailing, jumping back to Apex Legends and Fortnite— the games they’d switched from in the first place. I thought about making the switch to Apex too, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d already spent so much time learning every in and out of Warzone. And switching to Apex would mean starting from scratch. The thought of doing it all over again just seemed so, daunting. So I stuck with COD, growing more and more frustrated every day. Looking back, it’s kind of funny. I was so caught up in what I’d already put in that I was willing to burn myself out rather than let go. But luckily enough, some unrelated stuff in my life pushed me to take my studies more seriously, and I finally quit before the game (or my mental health) got any worse.
The second story picks up almost a year later, I was in my fifth semester of architecture school. I loved fluid, organic shapes, and I wanted to bring that vibe into my semester project. I’d been using SketchUp for a while, so naturally, I decided to double down and buy this super expensive course that promised to level up my skills. I wanted to model anything my mind could dream up. But here’s the thing: even when I managed to create something that looked cool, the surface quality was awful, and the models were so heavy they’d crash. I knew what the problem was— SketchUp just couldn’t handle those geometries the way I needed. I needed to switch to Rhino, which was much better for what I was trying to achieve. But switching felt like such a massive and terrifying step. I’d have to start over and, honestly, the idea of ditching everything I’d invested in SketchUp, plugins, and courses felt impossible. Plus, it was already around the middle of the semester, so there was no way I’d have anything worthwhile to show for my mid-semester review.
And then, for some reason, I happened to remember my Call of Duty and Apex Legends story. I felt a familiar knot in my stomach— the stubbornness, the refusal to move on. Was I really about to make the same mistake again? Was I seriously going to let myself get trapped just because I’d put so much in? The déjà vu moment hit me like a train, but this time, I wasn’t going to let history repeat itself. So, in true ‘fuck it, we ball’ fashion, I uninstalled SketchUp to force myself to commit to Rhino. And my mid-semester review was, let’s just say, not the best, because everyone else showed up with fancy-looking 3D models, and there I was, presenting some shitty sketches. But I knew I was playing the long game, so it didn’t matter. And honestly, I’d fallen in love with Grasshopper.
But what came after, was truly beyond anything I could’ve ever imagined. That project turned out to be the best semester project I'd done in architecture school (which in a way is also sad because it was only my fifth semester lol). And it didn’t just stop there, learning Rhino and Grasshopper changed the trajectory of my entire career. That’s how I discovered Computational Design. Over the next two years, I ended up securing top positions in four International Design Competitions and a National one, creating two Grasshopper plugins, landing an internship at Volkswagen, delivering a lecture to Master’s students, and somehow another internship at Audi (among a lot of other things). All because I finally decided to let go of things that just didn’t work.
And that’s exactly what the Sunk Cost Fallacy is. Google defines it as a phenomenon where a person is reluctant to abandon a course of action because they’ve already invested heavily in it, even when it’s clear that abandoning it is more beneficial. Maybe I never really thought about it because I never knew there was a name to it. But once you see it, you start to notice it everywhere— in the games you play, the projects you cling to, the relationships you stay in. It’s like an invisible trap that keeps you holding on, telling you that you’ve come too far to quit, even when it’s clear that moving on is the right choice. And it’s a trap I’ve seen way too many people fall into, which is why I felt that it was important to talk about it.
It’s always going to feel like the wrong time when you’re starting something new, but you just have to say ‘fuck it, we ball’ and well, ball. And finally, if you made it this far, there’s one thing that I want everybody to take away. Any time that you feel like you are stuck in a similar situation, just remind yourself this— the debt you owe is to your future self, not to your past.