The Cost of Saying Yes to Every Freelance Writing Gig

It’s too easy to stay busy being busy – learn to say no, focus on business-building activities, and stay open for jobs that pay what you're worth by incorporating opportunity cost into your decisions.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Opportunity cost dictates that even when you make the best choice possible, you lose out on the benefits of the next best option.

We see this constantly as we move through life, in everything from grocery shopping to deciding which book to read to choosing a route to drive to work. When you pick your life partner, you’ve said no to all others (I hope). Every time you choose to do something, you’ve chosen not to do something else.

In freelance writing, where we focus our energy and efforts matters. It’s super easy to stay so busy trying to please the wrong clients that you never have time to invest in building yourself up for better opportunities.

Opportunity cost isn’t a complicated mathematical formula. In fact, I only want you to think of it as a concept that can help you weigh your options as you make decisions around the types of gigs you choose to accept.

Let’s take a look at how you can apply opportunity cost in your writing business, not only to make good decisions for growth but to help you avoid costly mistakes that can hold you back.

How does opportunity cost work in freelance writing?

As humans, our daily decisions number in the thousands – should I cross the road? Should I eat now? Should I get divorced? Should I join a baseball team?

These decisions vary in complexity and in the level of effort and analysis we put into each one. The vast majority are simple and are informed by our knowledge and experience. Our brain is trained to take “mental shortcuts” and propose intuitive solutions as we face myriad challenges and situations each day.

This is called heuristics: an approach to problem-solving and decision-making that relies on judgment, common sense and/or experience to make a decision that may not be perfect, but will suffice.

Can you imagine how overwhelming it would be to consciously think through every potential consequence of every decision? Heuristics help us get the simple things out of the way so we can focus on more complex challenges.

Sometimes, the decisions we need to make are more difficult and do warrant the extra thought. Yet you’re making decisions in your business all day long and I bet you aren’t really thinking about half of them. You’re used to doing things a certain way – to spending your time doing specific tasks – and are relying on your automatic decision-making habits.

That’s an excellent survival strategy, but saying yes to everything is a terrible way to grow your business.