Opportunity Cost

Life is full of decisions. Some sources suggest that we make roughly 2000 decisions an hour. But does this enormous number really holds up? I wonder how this number was derived at the first place.

Think this way, opening this article is a decision, reading this paragraph is a decision, thinking about whether to continue to read after the first paragraph is a decision, ignoring your notification while reading is also a decision, not having a coffee is also a decision. Both positive and negative actions we took are a decision.

Opportunity cost refers to the loss of potential gain from other alternatives an alternative is chosen. When we choose to play a game for two hours in the night, you lost the opportunity to study, sleep, exercise, and doing chores in that two hours. They are what we call as the opportunity cost.

When we decide something, we lose something. It’s a loss of the choices not taken.

While doomscrolling through TikTok or short-form videos delivers a quick dopamine hit, it silently trades away every other things we can gain if we did something different.