opportunity costs

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, a 19 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

this publication is a place for me to reflect on productivity, health and tech, and drop unique opportunities in the space right to your inbox daily. if you’re new here, sign up to tune in!💌

scroll to the end for my daily roundup on unique opportunities!

onto today’s topic: opportunity costs 🫙 

when you decide to drop $40 on a t-shirt, your cost wasn’t just those $40. it was also what you could have otherwise spent the $40 on. that’s the opportunity cost.

i often refer to opportunity costs in my decision making processes, and never realized it’s a concept derived from economics (shoutout first day of econ101). opportunity costs can be thought of in units of time, money, or pretty much anything you associate value with. 🪙 

the real cost of going on vacation over break instead of pursuing an internship is the lost professional development opportunity, and the memories you made on that trip might have been worth that price — that’s completely valid. i’d probably choose the trip too.

it’s up to you to weigh the benefits, costs, and opportunity costs. the weights you assign to different levers are completely up to you and your priorities.

unbeknownst to us, we make decisions after considering benefits and costs countless times every single day. the smaller a decision is, the more confident you can be about it. it’s not every day you’re deciding which college to attend or job offer to accept. 🤷‍♀️ 

every day, you decide whether or not to attend class (at least i do), what to eat, when to go to the gym, and so much more. by attending class, yes i’m losing time, but i’m also losing what i could have been doing with that time. the benefit is staying on track with my learning .. sometimes.

what is currently your biggest opportunity cost? 🫵 

daily opportunity + resource drops 🔍️