Meucci error ≠ sunk cost
Meucci error ends where the realisation of sunk cost begins.
Meucci error is when a project fails because you didn’t dedicate enough resource to it. You knew what you had to do, but either didn’t or couldn’t do it.
On the other end, death by sunk cost is when you decide to withdraw further resource from a project.
In both cases, the project doesn't get further resources. The first isn’t due to a decision you consciously made. It might be due to an error, a mishap, or culmination of things beyond your control.
But the second? Deciding to invest no further resources into something regardless of what you’ve put into it in the past? That’s up to you.
Let’s take a step back for context.
Alexander Graham Bell has been credited with the invention of the telephone. What many don’t know is that Antonio Meucci was the first person to invent a ‘talking telegraph’. He had demonstrated his telephone sixteen years before Bell's patent. And registered his intention to file a patent for that invention five years before Bell.
But he made a $10 error. A mishap. One that costs so much more.
In those days, if you can’t afford to file a patent at once, you can file a patent caveat. For it to remain valid, you must renew it every year until you submit your full patent application. That way, as is the nature of ideas, when someone else has the same, yours will be recognised first.
Meucci renewed for three years, but couldn’t pay $10 to renew any further due to money issues. Things were tough for him at home and at work. About 15 months after his patent caveat expired, Bell submitted a patent application.1
The Meucci error? He didn’t sustain the record for what he started.
Yes, doing the work is its own reward. Yes, the making of the telephone could have been satisfying enough. And yes, what he started many years ago in Cuba and finished in America drained him of all resources. But in cases like this one, follow-through trumps intentions. Sad, but true.
Having the intention to file for a patent is worthless if someone else follows through. Even when you have the backing of the law. Especially then.
This applies to other things we choose to do. A project. A decision. A romantic proposal. And others.
Meucci error is a mishap your future self would have preferred didn’t happen.
But sunk cost? That’s a gift from your former self that is no longer useful.
The Meucci gap is the gap between when you stopped working on a goal and when someone else achieved the same or similar goal. In Antonio’s case, it was 15 months, after working on it for over two decades.