There is a misperception that if you start a book, you HAVE to finish it. I have been a victim to this, until recently. I was reading a book about the history of salt. I thought it might be interesting. It wasn’t. Overall, it was pretty boring. But I was determined to finish the book. Why? Because I started it. So as painful as it was, I kept reading—until I remembered my economics class from college.
Economic theory states that when the cost of something exceeds the benefit, you should stop doing or consuming that something. Apply this theory to my reading of The History of Salt, and I should stop—even with one chapter left. Why? Because the cost of time wasted reading that book was greater than the benefit received from reading it. So I put the book down. I guess I overestimated the joy of learning about the socioeconomic effect of salt mining in 6th century China.
It may appear that I’m weak, or I’m the one losing out by not finishing the book, or I don’t have the character to finish what I’ve started. On the contrary. I am the winner. I’m the winner because I was strong enough to RECOGNIZE that by continuing to read that book, I was losing opportunities to do other things more valuable with my time.
To illustrate my point, I created the graph below.
As you can see, I continued reading to the point where the time spent and the opportunity cost was greater than the joy I received from reading. In other words, I should have put down the book a long time ago.
Please note that it DOESN’T matter that I’ve already invested all those hours. Those are sunk costs. They can’t be part of my decision whether or not I should continue to about the history of salt. My decision has to be based on what’s the most valuable to me in the future—and it was NOT finishing that book.
I’ve applied this theory in other aspects of life—including dating. If the cost of spending another minute with a guy is greater than the benefit he offers me, I stop dating him. For example, even if the guy takes me to nice dinners or buys me gifts, those benefits still don’t outweigh the cost of having to listen to him talk about how he’s the greatest lawyer ever to walk the face of the earth. I also created another graph to illustrate this:
As you can see in this graph, I’m a lot better at recognizing when to call it quits with a guy than I am with a book
I loved that econ class. It taught me how to maximize every decision with the economics of life. The result? I’m now spending my time enjoying a really funny book about an agnostic man who tried to live the Bible as literally as possible. And I’m now dating nobody.
**So if you’re on a date with Jenny, and she starts what appears to be doodling on a napkin, don’t think she’s drawing pretty flowers. She’s probably doing some cost/benefit analysis of whether or not it’s worth spending any more time with you that evening
