The Hidden Cost of Everyday Choices

The cost of choices we don’t make, when carefully weighed against the chosen option, is worthwhile if the decision is made consciously.

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An opportunity cost is what you give up when you choose one thing over another.

In many cases, the calculation is simple, and the stakes are low. You might, for example, pick a chocolate milkshake over vanilla. Even if you made this choice every time, it wouldn’t meaningfully shape the course of your life. You are simply trading one immediate pleasure for another. One of these paths doesn’t set you on any particular trajectory—you can always reverse your choice next time.

Weighing the Options

Economists use the idea of opportunity costs to help individuals and groups decide between complex alternatives. The opportunity cost of funding one project, let’s say planting 1,000 trees, is the value of the next best project that you now can’t fund—maybe building a community garden.

Considering all the long-term benefits of the path you aren’t choosing helps people see that every real-world choice comes with a cost—all the value you are not choosing. Once we see these values side by side—the value of our first choice compared to the value of our next best alternative—we can begin to decide which trade-off we are going to make.

Just because opportunity cost exists doesn’t mean we should see our decisions in a negative light. If the benefits of the path you chose outweigh the opportunity cost, then you’ve made a great decision because the net gain is positive.

There’s another important idea when it comes to opportunity cost, and it really gets at the heart of why I’m writing this piece. The opportunity cost of any one decision often feels small. Let me give some examples:

• Help a friend move or stay home and do your own chores.
• Watch a TV show or pick up a book.
• Call a parent while you’re on a walk or listen to a podcast.
• Eat a cookie or a piece of fruit.
• Put an item back where it belongs or leave it on the counter.
• Buy something newer and better or be content with what you have.
• Respond in anger or respond with patience.

If you’re looking at each decision on its own or as a one-time exception, it’s easy to justify choosing instant gratification over the path that more closely aligns with your values.

One thing that’s helped me is realizing that these decisions are never made in isolation. When you choose the path of indulgence, impatience, or selfishness one day, it makes it easier to do the same in the future.

In that light, a better method of weighing trade-offs could be to ask yourself: If the choice you’re making today would be your default choice from now on, what would you choose? Framing the question this way multiplies the opportunity cost across all future decisions and, in doing so, helps you measure it on a scale of months and years.

The Scale of Choices

The weight of opportunity cost is easier to feel when you realize that you’re not just choosing this one time—you’re making a choice that influences all of your future choices:

• You’re not just saying no to a friend today—you’re weakening the value and closeness of that friendship.
• You’re not just watching one TV show—you’re passing up the chance to develop intellectually.
• You’re not just skipping one call to your mom—you’re allowing a distance to grow between you.
• You’re not just eating a cookie—you’re growing less healthy and likely putting on weight.
• You’re not just leaving an item on the counter—you’re choosing to live in a cluttered home.
• You’re not just giving in to impulse spending this one time—you’re passing up on better ways to invest, spend, or use that money in the future.
• You’re not just being impatient and angry today—you’re becoming that kind of person, which will be hard to change the further you go along that path.

Viewed in this light, every choice becomes a little bit more important.

The true opportunity cost involves the kind of person you won’t become if you keep making this choice repeatedly. You might say to yourself, this is just one time—it’s just an exception. But is it really? How often have you told yourself that you'll do something tomorrow, and then when tomorrow comes, you still don’t feel like it?

How long have you imagined yourself growing into a certain kind of person, practicing a particular set of values and virtues? And why hasn’t that day arrived? Chances are you have fooled yourself by only looking at the opportunity cost of this one single choice. I urge you to consider that each choice matters more than you imagine. In fact, you should imagine that today’s choice will be your default from now on.