Opportunity Costs

"Proof eats belief for breakfast. You don’t need faith in your abilities, you have evidence. Outwork your self doubt." Chris Williamson

It is very interesting to be able to choose between different opportunities. This being said, there's a certain danger to it – the opportunity cost of executing on one will remove the other ones. For some people, this can lead to freezing (for example myself) – to avoid losing opportunities it would make sense to just not execute on any to preserve all opportunities.

Of course, this does not work, but at a given moment it seems most reasonable not to choose. This is in itself a decision, probably the worst one actually. It is the decision that makes us avoid growth through wrongdoing. Unfortunately, I do not have an ideal six-step solution since I struggle with this issue myself, but I have recently gone after a few opportunities and that is what I want to discuss – how do we go after an opportunity or even better how do we create opportunities?

The simple answer is to ask. That's all it takes to initiate an opportunity. This Saturday there was a party of over 100 people at one of my friend's homes. I just threw the idea out there that I could DJ for a little while if that would be fine with them. The response at first was uncertain since he did not know himself what would be going down. I was finally given the green light a few days before. Getting the opportunity to DJ for about 40 people in the same space and people actually going crazy was absolutely amazing. I am over the moon that I went ahead and put myself out there.

I have lived by the idea of working till people can see how good you are, which is a fair shout, but it tends to not be enough. Promoting yourself is so underrated. It could be because it makes you feel like a door-to-door salesman that promotes a product that no one cares about. Nevertheless from personal experience self-promotion has only led to good things.

To conclude this short and slightly erratic thought flow – even though executing on an opportunity might make you lose out on others it is many times better than to sit around and not choose between them. Be active about it. Secondly, to create more opportunities to choose between I suggest you self-promote. Force yourself to stand face-to-face with imposter syndrome.

This Week's Suggestions:

🎶 "No Way Out" by Camo & Krooked featuring Mira Lu Kovacs:

This song came out just last week. It is a great drum and bass song with some relaxing heavy-going bass. It has great vocals and is very well produced. The especially cool thing about this song is that I happened to get a live recording of this exact song during a festival in the summer. It really made me feel connected to the artists and more generally to the music itself.

🎬 Why is Vladimir Putin so obsessed with Ukraine?:

Very well-produced video by Luke Harding, a Ukraine specialist. This video explains the history between Russia and Ukraine and then smoothly transitions to the present-day situation.

👨‍🎓 The Ultimate Speed Learning Tutorial (Learning in Layers):

A novel study technique in my repertoire. I had not heard of it before and thus it was an exciting idea to try out. I had my first sessions (last year it was DS this year it is sessions) this Saturday. I did not have time to fully embrace this method yet, but I believe it will be an unbeatable combo with my already applied active recall technique.

Thanks for your attention! Till next week!