Most people don't cut their obvious losses and prepare for change when it's in their best interest. Why? People hate losses, say Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, authors of Nudge: Improving Decision About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. And "losing something makes you twice as miserable [that] gaining the same thing makes you happy." They call this being "loss averse."

They demonstrate this via a simple experiment they describe. Half the students in a class are given coffee mugs with their home town university insignia on it. Mug owners are invited to sell their mugs to the other students who are invited to buy them. Sellers demand about twice as much to give up their mugs as others are willing to get one. In other words, "Once I have a mug, I don't want to give it up. But if I don't have one, I don't feel an urgent need to buy one," say the authors.

Aversion to loss helps produce inertia. Like Marie and Phillip, their desire to hold on to what they've got led to holding on to jobs that were doomed. And "if you are reluctant to give up what you have because you don't want to incur losses, then you will turn down trades you might have otherwise made," they say. This includes a better fitting job or career or focusing on looking for a new one.

This tendency to stick with your current situation can also be attributed to "status quo bias." If you've ever accepted a free, three-month magazine subscription, you understand. Seems like a good deal, right? But unless you make a point to cancel the subscription, the magazines keep coming after the free trial is over and you pay full price, point out the authors. Because of this phenomena, ten years later one of the authors still subscribes to magazines he doesn't read. "He keeps intending to cancel those subscriptions, but somehow never gets around to it," writes his co-author.

Marie never got around to assessing where she fit at the firm and eventually was asked to leave. Phillip told me, "I know I need to start looking." But he never got around to it and came to work one day to find the doors locked.

The authors point out another tendency: Applying rules of thumb. These are simple rules that help us make quick judgments. After all, who has time to analyze everything? When it comes to careers, people apply this rule of thumb more often than I can count: "It's easier to find a job when you have a job."

So they stick with their job which is wearing on them terribly. By the time I see some people who have followed this rule of thumb, they are falling flat on their faces from exhaustion or so beat down by a task master parading as a manager they couldn't market themselves effectively if their careers depended on it. Or because they're attitude was so sour, they were fired.

All of these tendencies are begging for one thing: attention. The lesson: Notice when you are more focused on holding on to what you have so you don't miss something that might be even better.

© by Andrea Kay