Inability to Close Doors

We irrationally keep options open even when doing so is costly and the preserved options are unlikely ever to be exercised. We mistake open options for value.

• In Dan Ariely's door experiment, participants paid money — real money — to keep useless doors open rather than let them disappear.
• Students don't drop underperforming courses to avoid 'losing' that option, even when spreading themselves thin damages all their grades.
• Entrepreneurs delay committing to a single direction, trying to keep multiple business models alive simultaneously, and succeed at none of them.