「機会コスト」| Opportunity Cost
🎄 メリークリスマス！ワンウェイです。
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この記事はチームスピリット Advent Calendar 2019の第6日目に掲載されます~
今日は、「機会コスト」の観点から、軽くに２０１９年の反省を書いてみたいと思います。最近、GACKT様の「選択肢を増やすのはいいことだと思ってない？」GACKTが教えてくれた“幸せのつかみ方」というインタービューを読んでて、すごく感動しました。この日記の一部は日本語で書きます。ww
🎄 Hello Everyone--Merry Christmas!
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This is Wan Wei. My 2019 can be summarised in one economic concept known as "opportunity cost", so I shall write about it here! Recently I read an interview with the J-rock star Gackt and was pretty inspired by some of his ideas towards the concepts of "knowing yourself", "choices" and "happiness". This post is written partly in Japanese because recently I felt inspired to practise Japanese.
「機会コスト」について
１８歳の時、「将来、エコノミストになりたい！」という夢がありました。
このゴールを目指して、シンガポール国立大学ですごく真面目な経済学専門の大学生でした。経済学の勉強で、重要なコンセプトの一つは「機会コスト」です。
機会コストの辞書定義は：
「一つのことを選択、実行した場合の、ほかの選択池を実行していた場合に得られていたであろう利益のこと。」
１８歳の私、「機会コスト」というコンセプトは理性的なコンセプトだと思いました。
しかし、年を取ればとるほど、「機会コスト」というコンセプトは徐々に理性的じゃなくて感情的だと気付いた。
人は皆んな感情的な生き物ですから。辛い時、本質から目を逸らし安いです。傷付いたことがあったから、また傷付くことが怖いために予防線を張ってしまって、「私は理性的なモノだけを信じてます」と自分に言い聞かせます。そして、自分の感覚を閉ざしちゃいます。
自分の「機会コスト」を深く理解して判断する為に、自分の価値観や物差しを知らなければならないと思います。
つまり、「機会コスト」が上手に判断するかどうか「自分の心の知能指数」次第です。
Indeed, "opportunity cost" is truly a function of "self awareness".
If opportunity cost is truly fully logical and perfectly quantifiable, then all of us trained in economics and engineering would have been leading perfect lives.
This year, I realised that it is not possible to do opportunity cost analysis correctly in the lack of self-awareness. The ordinal rankings of priorities would not have been truly reflective of what I want. And this could be a direct result of not honoring my own feelings.
We're all so transient as human beings-- And this picture in the midst of a Finnish forest reminds me that all pain will pass.
Some of us tend to over-focus on "thinking", and not "being"--myself definitely included. Personally, I tend to use "thinking and logic" to protect myself from being hurt, and to protect myself from worst case scenerios. It's been a pattern for some time already (perhaps due to living abroad for prolonged periods) and I'm thankful that I became acutely aware of this habit this year.
And this perhaps, is not uncommon to some Public Relations Practitioners. Ryan-san shared this podcast with me recently: how ex-Google Communications practitioner Jessica Powell faced severe burn-out in her course of work. When doing crisis management, PR practitioners are trained to plan for the worst case scenerios, and when doing networking with various parties, we are trained to be accomodating to all sorts of egos. (lol).
So it's easy to lose my sense of self, or rather, to be able to continue with certain expectations, we train ourselves to bury our sense of self. Because when we slow down and focus on "being” ourselves, all sort of emotions start to surface, which I may not necessarily want to deal with.
Many times I wanted to appear strong because the world outside can be scary, so I've always made the choice not to "waste time" dealing with complicated emotions.
And needless to say, those emotions don't go away. They stay dormant, they sometimes come back to bite me, and then there is a feeling of not being understood.
I sometimes do feel very alone when few of my closest friends or family members understand what i'll probably be doing for the next ten years-- the pet project of blockchain and banking the unbanked in developing economies. And then I slowly got used to it, over and over again.
People who do understand are industry counterparts, and that sort of intimacy is by definition limited. Pursuing something bigger than yourself can sometimes be a lonely journey, and so when I find people with the same vision and values, I do treat them as important.
Yet at the same time, there is naturally also a comfort of not being understood, because if I always kept a distance, then there is no chance of being misunderstood, hurt and rejected, right?
Relationships are truly tricky things when we think about it this way.
When relationships of any kind breaks down, one or both parties must have chosen to ignore or disregard their emotions, possibily bogged down by day-to-day routine tasks. Or perhaps, both parties never learnt to communicate their emotions in the first place.
So I've made a decision this year: If the opportunity cost of any job or relationship is having to consistently downplay myself and my emotions, then such a cost is too high.
Emotions just are, and honouring one's emotions is perhaps the start to making better boundaries for myself and others, and therefore making better choices.
Emotional awareness is truly the foundation of doing opportunity cost analysis.
結論：「悔いのないように」より「完璧ではない自分のままで生きて行く」の方が大事
最近、自分で選んだはずの新しくて、まだ見慣れない景色が好きになりました。
「機会コスト」を完全に理解する為、まず「時間には限りがある」を理解しなければなりません。時間を有効に使うかどうか使い方次第です。
GACKT様のインタービューから一番学んだことは、「無駄に選択肢を増やすことは、時間を浪費することにつながる」。
Therefore, always do what is true to self ＝）
Merry Christmas, everyone! ^^
