After irreversible commitments, schedule external reviews with pre-defined criteria — escalation of commitment corrupts self-assessment
After making irreversible commitments, schedule reviews with someone uninvolved in the original decision and define success/failure criteria in advance, because escalation of commitment will corrupt your post-decision assessment.
Why This Is a Rule
Escalation of commitment (sunk cost fallacy applied to ongoing decisions) is one of the most robust findings in behavioral economics: people invest more resources into failing courses of action precisely because they've already invested. The mechanism is loss aversion — acknowledging that an irreversible commitment was wrong means accepting the loss. Instead, you redefine success criteria to make the commitment look better: "We didn't hit the original target, but we learned a lot" (when the original target was the point).
Two structural safeguards counter this bias. First, an external reviewer who wasn't involved in the original decision has no ego investment in its success and can evaluate outcomes objectively. Second, success/failure criteria defined in advance (before outcomes are known) can't be retroactively adjusted to fit disappointing results. Together, these create an honest assessment structure that the decision-maker's psychology would otherwise distort.
This is the post-decision equivalent of Assign criterion weights before scoring options — knowing scores first lets you unconsciously rig the weights's temporal firewall (weights before scores): define evaluation criteria before you know how the decision turns out, so you can't move the goalposts.
When This Fires
- After making any one-way door decision (Classify every decision as one-way or two-way door before deliberating — minutes for reversible, days for irreversible) — schedule the review as part of the decision process
- After major investments, irreversible organizational changes, or long-term commitments
- When you notice yourself rationalizing disappointing results from a major commitment
- When evaluating others' irreversible commitments and wondering if sunk cost is operating
Common Failure Mode
Self-reviewing your own irreversible commitments: "I'll check in six months and see how it's going." Six months later, you've invested six more months of effort and emotional attachment. Your assessment is now contaminated by twelve months of commitment, and your brain will find reasons to continue. An external reviewer, looking at the same data without the commitment history, would see clearly whether the results justify continuation.
The Protocol
(1) At the moment of an irreversible commitment, immediately schedule a formal review at a defined milestone (date, spend threshold, or phase completion). (2) Define success and failure criteria in writing now, before outcomes are known: "This investment succeeds if [metric] reaches [threshold] by [date]. It fails if [metric] is below [threshold]." (3) Assign an external reviewer: someone not involved in the decision, with no stake in its success, who can evaluate against the pre-defined criteria. (4) At review time, the external reviewer assesses against the original criteria only. No moving goalposts. No "well, we also gained..." outside the criteria. (5) If criteria aren't met → the bias-free assessment is "this isn't working." Act on that assessment rather than on the rationalization your ego will produce.