Opportunity Cost and the Internet

Dear new developer,

Seth Godin writes every single day on a variety of interesting topics. He’s been blogging for years and years. Definitely an interesting person to follow.

I saw this post on opportunity cost in my RSS reader (you should use one) and thought it was an interesting take on all the free content out there. Of course, the content is free in terms of money but not in terms of attention.

From the post:

And the internet has raised the opportunity cost of time spent.

Our access to the world of learning and online resources means that the alternatives are far more valuable than they used to be.

You’re about to spend 11 minutes perfecting an email to a customer. You could do a 90% ideal job in one minute, and the extra 10 minutes spent will increase the ‘quality’ of the email to 92%.

The alternative? Now, you could spend that ten minutes reading a chapter of an important new book. You could learn a few new functions in Javascript. You could dive deep into the underlying economics of your new project…

What are you doing with your free time? Are you conscious of how you are spending it? Are you aware of the opportunity cost of say, reinventing the wheel, learning a new technology, responding to a off base comment in an online forum?

Time is your most precious resource. Where you invest it when you are starting out will compound over the years.

I’m not saying “Don’t have fun.” I’m saying understand the consequences of your choices and accept them with your eyes wide open. Realize that the cost of learning a new skill has plummeted due to the Internet, which means the relative cost of anything else has increased.

Sincerely,

Dan