Learn more about business with this collection
The impact of opportunity cost on personal and professional life
Evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of different choices
Understanding the concept of opportunity cost
Opportunity Cost: You Can Do Anything but Not Everything
When mulling over multiple choices, the quality of any option cannot be assessed in isolation from its alternatives. The price you pay (or the sacrifice you make, or the benefits you give up) for doing what you’ve chosen to do instead of doing something else is the opportunity cost.
In sum, an opportunity cost is the cost of passing up the opportunities that a different option would have afforded.
Many costs are calculated in terms of money. However, just because you don’t have to spend money to do something does not imply that the options you face are without their costs.
There’s an opportunity cost to even reading this, at this moment. You could have been watching TV, taking a nap, calling up a friend, or moving on to another article in the time you’re devoting to reading this article.
In a nutshell, even decisions that appear to be no-brainers carry the hidden costs of the options you will decline.
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MORE IDEAS ON THIS
“The right way to make decisions in practical life is based on your opportunity cost. When you get married, you have to choose the best spouse you can find that will have you. The rest of life is the same damn way.”
CHARLIE MUNGER
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195 reads
“Opportunity cost is a huge filter in life. If you’ve got two suitors who are really eager to have you and one is way the hell better than the other, you do not have to spend much time with the other. And that’s the way we filter out buying opportunities.”
CHARLIE MUNGER
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314 reads
Doing One Thing Makes You Sacrifice the Opportunity to Do Something Else of Value
- Life is all about values and priorities. You face trade-offs. Life requires that you make choices among mutually exclusive alternatives. Every time you select something, you forfeit other alternatives and the concomitant benefits. The cost of something is what you will give up to get...
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Learn to Evaluate Life Choices Via the Lens of Opportunity Costs
- You live in a world where you must therefore make choices. You cannot avoid regret since there are opportunity costs for every choice you will make.
- Everything in life is about opportunity costs. Every time you say “yes” to a choice, you are also saying “no” to everything else you ...
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CURATED FROM
CURATED BY
The cost of something is what you will give up to get it. This is opportunity cost.
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Related Collections
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Opportunity Cost Calculations
Many people and organizations fail to take into account the various opportunity costs.
- We need to actively question ourselves about the alternatives that may be missed out by deciding on a particular option.
- The often neglected cost of waiting too long is also a ...
Overestimating Opportunity Cost
Certain external constraints make us overestimate the opportunity cost, as we start to imagine all the foregone options as a missed opportunity and start to see the situation irrationally. This can cause a negative emotional and psychological reaction, like regret.
The opportunity cost i...
Opportunity Cost
We think of our opportunity cost if we decide to do something, fearing it is hampering our options and time, so we stay in limbo unable to decide on what to do.
Life is meant to be an experience, not something you plan and keep doing repeatedly.
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