What Would You Do Anyway? The Cost of Every Choice

Everything we do in life has an opportunity cost. I got reminded of that recently by a mentor who was not especially interested in letting me finish complaining.

I was venting to her about business, about deals that would not close, about a few things that felt heavier than they should have. She listened to all of it, and then she asked me a question that had nothing to do with any of it. She said, okay, I get all that. So how do you go to the gym every day?

I sat there for a second and answered it honestly. What is the alternative? Being out of shape. Being unhappy with how I look and feel. And underneath that, the real question: what would I do with that time anyway? Would I fill it with television? Would I work a bit more and a lot less efficiently? Would I sleep? The gym is not hard for me because I already know exactly what I am giving up to be there.

That is opportunity cost, and it applies to every choice, not just the ones we label as hard. Every time you decide to do something, or not do something, you are accepting one alternative and declining another. Going to the gym means giving up the couch. Picking a partner means giving up other partners, and it also means giving up being alone.

It is worth saying clearly that giving something up does not mean you lost. Most of the time the cost is not a punishment, it is just a price. You are paying something to get something else. That is the whole transaction.

Something else worth knowing is that a lot of these costs are only paid in the moment, not forever. Early on I had to trade a great deal of time for a small amount of money. Today I can make more in less time than I could ten years ago, because the price of that trade changed as I did. Marriage looks similar from the outside. You give up some solitude in the early days, and then the honeymoon phase ends and you get a fair amount of it back, because nobody can be around another person every hour of every day without going slightly insane.

The point she was making landed a beat later. I do not complain about the gym, because the alternative is obvious to me. So why was I treating a little more time for a lot more money as some enormous burden when I had been making that same trade willingly for years? She was right. Nothing is free. Just make sure you know what you are paying, and make sure you are actually okay with paying it.

Try This Tomorrow: Take the thing you have been dreading and write down what you are actually giving up by doing it, and what you would be giving up by not doing it. Put both costs side by side. The decision usually stops being an argument at that point.

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