<strong>Determine the maximum loss with which you are comfortable at the outset of an undertaking, be it a stock purchase or a new project.</strong>

<strong>Put your stop order in at the time you buy. It’s amazing how some efforts can dive. If you don’t know when to let go of a project, it can pull you under!  It's the classic Monkey Trap, never freeing yourself with your hand through the bars, around the banana you'll never get.</strong>

<strong>Optimism can become a desperate hope that obscures.  Be objective.  If the project is going to fail, let it fail fast, freeing you to do something with greater odds of success.</strong>