How do you know that what you want is actually worth wanting?
One way to answer this question is to ask yourself what you are willing to trade off to achieve it.
Every choice comes with a trade-off.
For example, I want a bigger home (ideally freehold ‘cause I’m sick of service charges), but I’m not willing to trade that for a full-time stable job, because I value my freedom too much.
So at this point in my life, a house is not worth wanting.
This is essentially what they mean when they talk about opportunity cost: every time you choose one thing (a freehold house + employment), you are also choosing not to do something else (erratic and adventurous portfolio career with future potential).
When making important decisions, we tend to ask:
What do I get if I choose this?
Much less often do we ask:
What am I giving up?
And that second question is often where the better decision is hiding.
I love my slash career — different threads of work stitched together on my own terms: slash career creator, commercial modelling/acting, buyer/relocation agent, UGC creator/presenter, running my blogs.
I don’t want to give this up for sitting in an office 10 hours a day just so I can have a bigger home.
I will have a bigger home, but it won’t happen at the expense of my wellbeing.
Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity cost.
Opportunity-cost thinking asks us to stop judging choices on their own terms and start comparing them to alternatives.
Sometimes it simply means asking yourself:
What will I no longer be able to do if I say yes to this?
And unlike money, energy can’t simply be recouped later that evening. If I choose to give that day away, it is gone for good — prioritised above everything else I could have done with it.
Have you noticed that when you say no to something that isn’t aligned, life often responds almost immediately, as though it has registered that you’ve upgraded? It happens
When you’re weighing something up, try asking yourself:
1. Compared with what?
Is this option better than the other things I could realistically do?
Because almost nothing is inherently a good deal. It is only good relative to something else.
A job can pay you more and cost you more.
An opportunity can look impressive and consume all the time you wanted for something else.
A house can give you more space and leave you with less freedom.
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