The (almost) unsurmountable cost of change

Changing is hard in general. Humans are animals of custom and it is hard to eradicate a long-established behavior even if it has negative effects, particularly if the benefits from the change are not immediately visible or the threat is in the distant future. Let's think of giving up smoking: it is a general consensus that smoking is bad for your health and that many premature deaths are directly attributable to smoking, but the immediate benefits that we derive from smoking outweigh in many cases the far looming shadow of early death.

But even for benefits with a much shorter turn-around change is difficult: how many times have we heard of people who are unhappy in their job and yet they never get to look for another one even if the market is booming. The fear that the new job will not be much better than the current one, that one might not fit in the team or that the new company could go bankrupt and render all the effort useless, can be so overwhelming that many of us a ready to endure a worse-than-average situation to avoid taking the change in our own hands. And that is also understandable; nobody wants to put a lot of work for nothing, so if the uncertainty is high you better stay where you are and at least spare yourself the work.

Photo: David S.A from Pixabay

But there is an even more damning case of refusal to change: those cases where the costs of the change are minuscule and the benefits immediately visible, but we just cannot be bothered to elicit the change. Just think of all the utensils which are long past their prime condition and would be easy and cheap to replace: the old broomstick for the terrace, which you should have replaced years ago and would cost little more than a couple of cups of coffee, yet you never manage to find the strength and the time to buy a replacement.

Today I have found myself in a similar situation and, luckily, I broke my inertia and managed to change. As I mentioned in the past, I usually listen to podcasts whenever I find myself in a situation that allows it: working in the garden, driving, waiting at the dentist's, etc. For several years I have been using this app on my phone that was recommended to me several years ago but which, in the meantime, has evolved to eat up all the free memory in my phone, to the point that it has been fairly sluggish rather frequently. I have to admit that I surfed the web trying to find a solution and all I found was the confirmation that this was a design flaw that many people have suffered but that the developers are not ready to tend to, so I just endured the pain. For months and years.

Today, I have decided that it was not that difficult to change to a different app. I only listen to about ten podcasts, so typing the name is not that much work. And finding a new app took me literally less than ten minutes: there are many good options that could easily replace the faulty one that I have been using for years, all I needed was a bit of information and a lot of decision.

It will probably take me a week or two to get fully acquainted with the working of the new app, but I can confirm that some of the benefits have been visible immediately: instead of having barely 400 MB of free memory I can now enjoy 2300 MB and my phone is again delightful to use as it was some years ago when I first bought it.

I cannot promise that I will be more pro-active the next time around that I face a possible change, but at least this time I have managed to break the vicious circle. I hope you manage too every now and then. Have a nice evening.