Stop Digging

An idiom I try to remember is that if you find yourself in a hole — stop digging.

Holes in which you may find yourself range from being on the wrong side of an argument, taking a gamble and losing — but trying to win it back, going all-in on an idea and not admitting when it’s failed, asserting something as fact and not admitting you’re wrong when it’s disproven.

When you face the fact that you’re in a hole, you mitigate further loss and damage to your reputation when you stop digging yourself in further.

You can’t keep digging — digging in on your incorrect beliefs, throwing good money after bad, or resign yourself to a single course of action because of sunk costs — and expect to dig yourself out of the hole.

Digging yourself into a hole, and then digging a deeper hole because you don’t want to own up to the truth and the effort it will require to face facts and make changes, only narrows your recovery options because the sides of that hole grow taller and taller and take your further and further away from the surface with every shovelful of dirt.