You’ve Waited 20 Minutes. Can You Leave Now?

01

The moment it becomes hard to leave

Jiyeon joins a queue outside a restaurant for lunch. Between checking her phone twice and shifting her bag to the other shoulder, 20 minutes pass. Three groups are still ahead of her. A member of staff says it will probably take another 20 minutes for a table to become available.

She thinks of another restaurant: a ten-minute walk, then an estimated five-minute wait to be seated. She does not have to eat at the first place today. Let’s suppose both restaurants would give her a satisfying lunch at a similar price.

Moving would be a little quicker. Yet she finds it hard to step away. ‘I should have gone there in the first place. If I leave now, what were these 20 minutes for?’ The waiting that is already over occupies more of her attention than the waiting still to come.

02

Look at the time from now onward

If Jiyeon stays in this queue, she can expect to be seated about 20 minutes from now. Moving means a ten-minute walk and a five-minute wait on arrival: about 15 minutes in all. The 20 minutes already spent remain part of both choices. Neither option can give that time back.

Leaving does not make those earlier 20 minutes disappear all over again. Staying does not bring them back either. Under these assumptions, the five-minute difference is between the 20 minutes ahead if she stays and the 15 minutes ahead if she moves.

These numbers are fictional conditions chosen to make the comparison clear. Actual waiting times may grow longer or shorter. We are first holding the purpose and the satisfaction of the meal roughly equal, then bringing the other conditions back into the picture one at a time.

03

A name for what has already been spent

Time or money already spent that cannot be recovered through the choices ahead is called a ‘sunk cost.’ Rather than memorizing the name, it can help to ask: ‘Could changing my choice now actually get this back?’

Jiyeon still feels reluctant to waste the time she has spent. Separating that feeling from the wait ahead reveals different reasons for the same action. ‘I’ve waited so long, so I’ll keep waiting’ and ‘What I’ll get is worth the further wait’ both mean staying in the queue, but the expectations behind them differ.

Keep Jiyeon’s current place in the queue and both waiting estimates unchanged, and restate the options she has now. She could be seated here in 20 minutes or at the other restaurant in 15. After separating out the time, she can consider other conditions alongside it, such as her food preferences and how she feels physically.

04

Does that mean leaving is always better?

If Jiyeon particularly likes the food at the first restaurant, she may have a reason to wait five minutes longer than at the other restaurant. If the route to the other restaurant involves a long flight of stairs and her legs are already aching, the ten-minute walk also carries a different burden. Less time does not make two choices equivalent.

We can separate the fact that she has waited from the tiredness she feels after waiting. She cannot recover those 20 minutes, but her present fatigue affects the walking or standing ahead. This is not an instruction to erase everything that happened before.

Information learned while waiting matters too. If the queue has barely moved, or staff have just shown in a group with a reservation, that may give her a reason to ask again about the remaining wait. Information gained in the past and costs paid in the past play different roles.

Staying because she wants the first restaurant’s food and staying because she fears losing the earlier 20 minutes can look the same from outside. The reasons for spending another 20 minutes are different, though. There is room to consider what Jiyeon hopes to get from that time.

05

Bring the question to another choice

A similar hesitation can appear when you have read a hundred pages of a book but no longer feel drawn to pick it up. ‘I’ve come this far. I ought to finish it.’ You can briefly separate those first hundred pages from the reading time still ahead.

If you are curious about what comes next, or want to continue the experience of reading, those are reasons to go on. If the book serves a course of study you have chosen, finishing it may give you something you need. If only the time already invested is keeping the book open, you could also consider pausing or changing how much you read.

The reading you have already done does not vanish in this case either. What you have learned remains, and whether to read the next page is a choice you can make now. Neither continuing nor stopping is always the wiser choice.

Back outside the restaurant, Jiyeon looks at the menu by the door. It lists the dish she had wanted to eat. Her phone shows the walk to the other restaurant. The shoulder carrying her bag aches a little.

She loosens her grip on the bag strap and adjusts it. She looks once at the dish on the menu, then at the other restaurant’s name on her phone. Her finger rests over the map, and her feet are still in the queue.