Opportunity Cost, Zone of Genius and How to Win

Clarity = freedom.

Good morning

This week, I’m turning the spotlight inward, examining ways to cultivate our best selves. Hope you find it helpful.

In today's edition, among other things:

• The Opportunity Cost of Everything

• Zone of Genius

• How to Say Hello

• Life Advice from Sam Altman

• How to Win

• Deep Dive into the Security for AI

• Dysfunctional Co-Founders Relationships

• How to Get from High School Math to Cutting Edge ML/AI

Onwards!

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The Opportunity Cost of Everything

Opportunity cost is a concept in economics and decision-making. It refers to the value of the next best alternative that must be given up when making a choice. In other words, it's the cost of choosing one option over another. We do that every day, although most of the time not understanding that we’re doing it, the why and the cost. Here’s Jack Raines:

Every single day, our life is driven by opportunity costs of past, present, and future. While we're not always conscious of it, opportunity costs are at the core of every decision that we make. Decisions themselves are quite literally the inflection point of opportunity where we choose one path over another.

(…)

Raines is making a case that we don’t waste time by making wrong decision but not making any decisions.

We see this happen two ways:

• Apathy

• Hustle

The Cost of Apathy

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

Wake up at 7:30. Roll out of bed, log on your computer at 8:00. Sit around in your sweatpants, make some coffee. Work for thirty minutes, then mindlessly scroll through social media. Maybe you eat some leftovers for lunch. Maybe you pick something up. Back to the computer til five. Then you hit the gym. Come home and shower. Watch football/The Bachelor/Game of Thrones/whatever. Then you make dinner and go to sleep, because it was a long day!

And then you do that over and over and over and over again.

(…)

Yet we get 10,080 minutes every week. How do you spend those?

(…)

The Cost of Hustle