We all know that knowledge has a lifetime, or more precisely, your degree has a lifetime, in which the time you invested in it and all the knowledge you gained from it is no longer important. That is why in university we keep hearing the phrase “lifelong learning,” meaning you should always be ahead of the curve and keep updating your knowledge.
One greater problem we are all facing in 2026, especially with AI, is the Sunk Cost Fallacy, also called the gambler’s fallacy. It is the idea of continuing to invest in something (time, money, effort, emotions) just because of what you have already put in. Giving an example with a relationship would be the best way for people to understand this. Imagine a couple that has been together for 8 years, the relationship is toxic, draining, and neither is happy. But they stay, because “we’ve been through so much together.” The history is real, but it is gone either way. The only question that matters is: does staying make the next year better than leaving?
Learning is hard. Investing years in earning a degree is hard, and you did that work and started thinking it must be valuable, so now it is time to harvest the results. But with AI, your 5 years of learning programming and being good at reading and understanding code could, after 2 more years, be just like saying you are good at operating a fax machine or reading physical maps. I know it is a hard pill to swallow, but it is the truth. A little dark joke that might help you get through this: someone in America has spent $200k over the past 3 years learning software engineering, is still paying off that debt, and everyone is now telling them it is worthless…. and it is hard to get past that pain.
“The best time to switch was yesterday. The second best time is now ” – Not me
Some tools have impacted our lives and acted as 2x accelerators. A good example I can remember is the dishwasher or the dryer, you can use the time saved to do other important things. But AI is a different breed of accelerator; it is a 10x accelerator or even more. AI has shortened the half-life of everything (ideas, products, skills, and even businesses). Things become outdated faster than ever before.
