Opportunity Cost: The Economics of Time
M
Published
Economists use a concept called opportunity cost.
Whenever you choose one option, you give up the opportunity to choose something else.
Spend $100 on one thing and you can’t spend it somewhere else.
Time works exactly the same way.
Every hour spent on one activity is an hour unavailable for something else.
Scroll your phone for two hours and you didn’t just spend two hours online.
You gave up two hours that could have gone toward:
- sleep
- reading
- exercise
- learning
- family time
- creative work
These trade-offs accumulate.
Daily choices shape weekly patterns.
Weekly patterns shape years.
And years shape a life.
To think clearly about these trade-offs, it helps to categorize time.