Many of us in our 20s or 30s feel that some people have it all - a well-paying job, bustling social life, a demi god-like physique, and the coolest music taste. 

We will even be told by books and public influencers that each of us can have all of these things. 

This fosters feelings of inadequacy. 

What we may fail to realize is that we only see aspects of others’ lives that appeal to us or have been cherry-picked to showcase on social media. The unseen characteristics are either simply not visible or taken for granted. 

We end up trying hard to get everything right and still feel deficient in many areas. 

Being aware of the notion of tradeoffs might change the way we perceive situations or make decisions. Ironically, by making tradeoffs, we might achieve more than in the quest of getting everything. 

Simply put, a tradeoff is giving up one benefit or opportunity in exchange for another due to limited resources. The price of the benefit that we give up is called the opportunity cost. 

Tradeoffs are quick to surface or easy to spot - lavish houses mask crippling debt, excessive drug abuse leads to organ damage. In other cases, the tradeoff is hard to evaluate and may unearth overtime.

People with top numerical abilities might not turn out to be the life of the party. 

Many moms may not end up having great careers to watch their kids advance. Tradeoffs teach us that to excel at a few aspects in life, we might have to be average at many others. 

Time is the fundamental constraint. 

A majority of decision making centers around allocating scarce resources or evaluating opportunity costs. 

Consider broadly, the most important areas - health, work, family, relationships and hobbies. 

When one area feels well on track, we usually find ourselves making course corrections in others. The world has multiple objectives tugging us in different directions. 

Undisputable that if you use an hour on something, you can’t use it for anything else. Yet, out of sheer habit or obligation, we do not end up devoting time to activities we value most. 

Being aware of tradeoffs and recognising opportunity costs can help cut back on low value activities or not forgo things we’d rather prioritize. 

We also become more satisfied with the choices we make. This is easier said than done. 

Tradeoffs are important, but how do we make them?

Each objective of decision-making has a different basis for comparison and can’t be measured by the same yardstick or a metric of satisfaction. You’re often trading off apples, oranges and fish at the same time.

We rely on intuition, guesswork and experience but often find ourselves in a bind. The hard part is deciding the real value of an activity and organizing different alternatives to enable a tradeoff. 

Let’s say we have clear objectives and know the consequences each alternative will have for the objective. For example, multiple jobs (alternatives) may have different pay, location benefits and work cultures (objectives). 

Our mind is quick to eliminate alternatives that are dominated - no better than others on any objective. 

Among the options that remain, making subjective judgements for qualitative objectives (tastier food, funnier jokes, low flexibility) requires higher mental bandwidth. 

A well researched method in decision making is to ‘swap’ the consequences of one objective for another. For example, in comparing two holiday destinations, you might consider a $100 increase in fare worthy of a beach-front home. 

This would help to remove cost and location of the home from the equation and hinge the comparison on fewer objectives (say travel time, weather, etc.) and potentially make the decision easier. 

Similarly, while considering whether to spend an hour at the gym or read a book, you ask - are you willing to swap 300 calories for 20 pages of fiction? 

This is to say, if you can’t trade off between alternatives, reduce the decision criteria or objectives involved by equating or ‘swapping’ some criteria and then considering others that require deeper thought. 

Of course, determining the relative value of different consequences is hard and reliant on context, but by concentrating on the value they bring, we become mindful of what we are giving up in order to pursue a selected alternative. 

Moreover, we also become aware of what others might be giving up by choosing to optimize for characteristics that are conspicuous and advertised. 

Inadequacy often stems from not having optimized for the variable we seek due to constraints or personal preferences that disable a tradeoff. 

As a final thought, as we wade through the complexity of tradeoffs and value judgements, it might be worthwhile to inspect if the mental energy comes from the human need to contribute and make a difference, rather than fear and survival instinct.