Tradeoffs

Annie Duke writes in Thinking in Bets, “The quality of our lives is the sum of decision quality plus luck.” Indeed, everything is about choices.

Often, these choices may appear as A, or B?

Should I dedicate my life to what makes me money, or what I feel passionate about?

Should I be active at Twitter, or at YouTube?

Should I quit my job and start a business, or stick with my job?

There’s a case to be made that you don’t need to choose between A and B; that an option C is out there, which enables you to do both A and B. Barbara Sher calls the Either/Or Fallacy, and Jim Collins calls this Tyranny of the OR

Finding a way to do both is, indeed, a more viable option than ever nowadays. Multi-hyphenate careers are more prevalent than a few decades ago. We can do things that make us money in order to fund the things that we want to spend more of our time doing. 

If we do this, in a way, we’re keeping two options open. This comes at a cost too!

The cost is the enhanced risk that neither really work out to be a resounding success. You’ll be moving slower than your peers in either field. You’ll probably feel more stressed, and you’ll need to stay way more organized than you would have if you were doing just one thing. The cost is also that one making money can eat into the time for the more passionate venture. Not to mention costs on your personal time—health, relationships, relaxation, hobbies, etc.

There really is only one benefit: that you can still afford to do both things. Ideally, they can feed each other; a job feeds your side business, or your creative hobby, etc.

Everything has tradeoffs. There is no life without it.

If you’re going to keep your options open, then accept that, and keeping moving forward. 

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