Conversation

anyone else have this weird productivity thing where when a project gets to say 90% done (for real, not joke), there's an incentive to just finish it as fast as possible because the ongoing overheads/transaction costs are now too high relative to the remaining core cost/value...
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If you have 2 loans to pay off, at 5% and 10%, in general you pay off the higher-rate loan as fast as possible while making min payments on the lower-rate loan. But if the lower-rate loan has like $20 left on it and the higher rate one has $20k, you should just pay it off.
Replying to
I do tend to unconsciously do this. The costs of keeping a project alive, both concrete and intangible mental load, are so high for me, that it makes sense to ship earlier than necessary or optimal just to shut down the maintenance transaction costs of keeping it alive.
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The only time I *don't* do this is when I'm unconsciously scared of the outcome of actually shipping (success/failure, criticism etc). The trigger moment is a step up in irreversible outcome risk, so there's a temptation to hold on when it would be better and cheaper to just ship
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I guess this part is just a restatement of fail fast/release-early-release-often philosophy. But the internal "carrying cost" burden is an additional distinct reason to RERO.
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In the loan problem your sunk costs are payments already made. When you decide on basis of future cost it is better to shrink the higher interest stream of future payments, than the low interest stream. e.g. payoff your credit card debt before the student loan.