Tuesday night, and my Business notes are open to opportunity cost. The definition look neat: the next best alternative you give up when you choose something else. On the worksheet it is always a factory choosing between machines. On my desk it is quieter, and harder to pretend I do not understand.
I already start a small commission sketch before I open the book. Pencil still warm in my hand. Maths practice is under the sketchbook, the kind with percentages and currency that Business always borrow. I tell myself I only finish “just the face” and then switch. Just the face become the hair. The hair become another twenty minutes I do not write down anywhere.
Opportunity cost is not the thing you buy. It is the thing you do not get because you use your time on the first thing. Tonight the first thing is a drawing that maybe turn into money later. The next best use of same hour is the practice set. That set will not send me a transfer, but it will show up on a paper that do not care how pretty the character look.
Before, I treat this trade-off like a mood. If I feel creative, drawing win. If I feel guilty, homework win. Business want the choice named clearly, not make it sound special. Naming it do not make me stop drawing. It stop me from calling the skipped Maths page “nothing,” like unused paper has no price.
In the notes I write my own example under the factory one. Choice A: finish the sketch. Choice B: thirty percentage questions. Cost of A is the clear practice I did not do. Cost of B is the unfinished face and the client wait one more evening. Both costs are real. Only one show up in materials list.
I want study finance later, and people act like that means loving spreadsheets. For me it means get honest about trade-offs before the numbers get big. One hour is small. Call it free is how I practise being wrong about value.
I close the sketchbook on the unfinished face and do one side of the Maths sheet. Not because drawing is waste. Because opportunity cost only help if I pay it on purpose, not find tomorrow that I pay it by accident.