Staying Put Is a Choice, and Someone Else Picked the Default
Samuelson and Zeckhauser's 1988 status quo bias experiments show that doing nothing is an option with a default attached. Write the from-scratch version of one thing.
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A life stays stuck mostly because the current arrangement gets a head start in every comparison, not because it won one. William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser named this status quo bias in a 1988 paper in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.
What did the experiments show?
They gave 486 students at Boston University and Harvard’s Kennedy School an investment decision with several options. In one version you were a neutral investor; in another you had inherited a portfolio sitting in one of those options. Whichever option wore the “already yours” label drew a larger share than it did when neutral.
The field data agreed. Harvard’s health-plan records let the authors compare new hires, who choose with nothing to defend, against employees already enrolled. Continuing staff stuck with their old plans substantially more.
What does that say about your life?
Your job, your flat, the hour you wake up: each is a status quo nobody chose from a menu. Most were the first option that worked, then renewed by default, even though regret tends to run toward the road not taken.
What do you write down?
Pick one thing. Title the page “If I were choosing this from scratch today.” Describe what you would pick today, with no history attached. If your current version shows up again, you have now chosen it. If not, the gap between the two versions is your next move.
Wake-up time is a good first candidate; almost nobody picked theirs. DontSnooze is an iPhone alarm that gives you 30 seconds after it rings to film proof you’re up, a fair test of whether your 6:30 survives being chosen.
The current option never competes on equal terms. Make it compete once, on paper.
To see which area of life to question first, score eight of them.