Name the Tradeoff

Name the Tradeoff

A choice uses resources that cannot be used for every alternative. The relevant comparison is the best feasible alternative you would give up, not an imaginary perfect option. Separate costs already incurred from costs you can still change. Past effort may have taught you something, but it does not by itself justify more effort. Ask which option now serves your priorities, given the time and information available.

Where this sits in the course

“Name the Tradeoff” is lesson 1 of 3 in Decisions You Can Explain, a course about make tradeoffs visible and learn from outcomes without hindsight.. The lessons are sequenced rather than a menu, so this one assumes what came before it.

Decisions You Can Explain is itself one of 18 courses in thinkr. The set opens with what philosophy is, moves through the Stoics and the Eastern traditions, then into what can be known, what exists, how to act and how power works — closing on practical reasoning you can use in an argument this week.

In the app this lesson is followed by 4 exercises that check whether the idea actually landed — and every answer, right or wrong, is explained rather than scored. That is the part a written page cannot reproduce.