Opportunity Cost
November 28, 2024•195 words
Two physical objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. If you have any doubts about this - trying jamming both legs into a single pant leg as a quick experiment.
Opportunities are the same - seizing one will generally cost you another.
This is important to consider where tradeoffs of time, money, and desired outcomes are involved.
Here's an example: Let's say you're looking to buy a software or a solution for your business/project. Buying that solution right now might solve an immediate problem, but will it create issues elsewhere?
How will that product age in comparison to the rest of your technology?
Will that solution eventually become a bottleneck as everything else evolves around it?
This is not to say that you should obsess over optimizing around perfection. After all, perfect is the enemy of good. However, you should evaluate things beyond the scope of immediate fires.
Letting something be a "tomorrow" problem is a short-sighted strategy that will put you on a problem-solution treadmill.
You want to look at it through the lens of - "If do X will this cost me Y in the future in terms of Z?"