Vivek Kaul: A LinkedIn lesson on the opportunity cost of life

I really enjoyed reading it. Other than the fact that I always enjoying reading Rankin’s Rebus books, there were three reasons that made the activity even more pleasurable this time around.   

One, this was the first time I had managed to get hold of a physical Rebus book a day before its release. In the past I have always read new Rebus books on Kindle. But in the last few years, I have found that reading physical books gives me more pleasure. It also helps me retain more information (while reading non-fiction). This might be an impact of too much screen time with one too many screens being a part of my daily life.  

Or as the economists would have put it, the law of diminishing marginal utility seems to have kicked in. Or as us lesser mortals put it, excess of anything is bad. Or in pure business terms, my reading on Kindle days are more or less over. Long live Amazon: There is still a lot of shopping to do.  

Two, having visited Edinburgh for three days in late July, I could put a visual to Rankin’s words and relate to the physical spaces in the book in a much better way.  

Three, unlike the previous two Rebus books, which were written during and after the pandemic, and had a pessimistic undertone running through them, Midnight and Blue has hope at its heart, and even a dyed-in-the-wool old school hack like me who is normally oozing with cynicism enjoyed this slightly more optimistic tone of the book, telling me that hope sells better than anything else.  

Which is why I keep telling myself that I should be in the business of recommending five stocks that will make you rich, dear reader, by the end of next week. Sadly, it’s a little too late for me to go down that line. In a world where everything is Googleable, my past will be held against me.  

Now, the sad part is that Midnight and Blue might be the last book that Rankin might write featuring Rebus. He has tried to end the series in the past as well. And if that turns out to be the case then one will have to read the Rebus books all over again. Because what is life without a little bit of its daily Rebus. And The Big Bang Theory. And MS Dhoni. And Bill Watterson and all the time to do all the nothing in the world.  

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There are three types of readers in this world: those who read, those who look for takeaways to be able to make LinkedIn posts out of it, and those who want to know in advance what they are going to learn from a book. 

Actually, there are two types of readers in this world, given that the second type and the third type are really the same. Let’s call them the takeaway types. The takeaway types have had a problem with the way I write given that I rarely get to the point straightaway.  

Well, well, well: Isn’t the journey really the reward? Especially when you don’t know where you are going? Now, that’s a nice LinkedIn takeaway. But let me get to the point I was trying to make by talking about Ian Rankin and John Rebus.  

If I like something I tend to talk/write about it quite passionately. Many of my corporate friends have seen me talk up Rankin’s Rebus quite a bit over the years and want to know which Rebus book they should start with. That is a question which I really can’t answer. At least, not in a way I am expected to.  

The ideal way to read the Rebus books is in a series. That’s the way you appreciate the long arc of these books with a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde undertone built into them, develop a connection with all the characters, and finally appreciate the beautiful city of Edinburgh where the story is set. Also, if you can’t read Rebus, do at least read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  

So, in order to be able to read the Rebus books in a series one needs a lot of time and mental bandwidth, which most corporate people running with the daily rigmarole of life, don’t really have. There is a job to be done. Deadlines to be met. Bosses to be handled. Reportees to be shouted at. Meetings in which the date and time of the next meeting is decided, to be attended. EMIs and taxes to be paid. Some money to be made on the side by betting on futures and options. Parent-teacher meetings to be attended. Weddings to be a part of. Holidays to be planned. Or as someone put it to me a couple of years back: “You want me to read two dozen books, Vivek? If I wanted to do that I would go back to school. Are you mad?"  

Basically, there is a lot that one needs to do in order to make more money in life through a corporate job or even continue making the amount of money that one already is. And that needs time. As Erik Angner writes in How Economics Can Save the World—Simple Ideas to Solve Our Biggest Problems: “If you resolve to make more money, you probably can’t just will it into existence. (If you can, please give me a call.) You have to do something to get the money flowing. You may have to work harder to accelerate the next promotion. You may have to work longer hours."  

As I said, this needs time. More time. And more focus. More mental effort. As Angner puts it: “Whatever you choose to do, something else has to give. Suppose you decide to work longer hours. Working more may mean less time with your family and kids. It may mean less sleep. It probably means less leisure."  

And reading books for most is an act of leisure, something that needs time. So when you are busy trying to make more money, or chasing that next promotion to get closer to your level of incompetence in a hierarchy, or trying to handle office politics, or just trying to post some life lessons on LinkedIn to show off your immense wisdom, you are bound to run short of time. That’s the trade-off you are making in order to do what you want to do. And that’s your opportunity cost.  

As Richard Thaler writes in Misbehaving—The Making of Behavioural Economics: “The opportunity cost of some activity is what you give up by doing it. If I go for a hike today instead of staying home to watch football, then the opportunity cost of going on the hike is the forgone pleasure of watching the game." 

So, is paying the opportunity cost good? Or bad? It depends. On you. As Angner puts it: “If you want to be rational, you have to pay attention to opportunity costs. It’s rational to work more only if the benefits of doing so exceed the benefits of whatever else you could be doing with your time."  

Of course, it’s not as simple as Angner makes it sound. Sometimes circumstances work out in a way where an individual may not want to continue working to make more money but their family circumstances might be such that opting out may not be an option because life takes the course that it does.  

Nonetheless, there is an opportunity cost to the rat race of life and the least one can do is sit back and think about it: Do you really want to keep running with the herd? Or just take a break? Or do something else? Is chasing more money really the answer? Do you really want to be a boss to more people? These questions should at least be asked.  

Indeed, real and deep enjoyment in life where an individual is almost one with what they are doing always needs a lot of time and mental bandwidth. And that is always a tradeoff which comes with a great opportunity cost.  

Let me explain this a little more through my life choices. I chose to opt out of the rat race in my mid 30s, which gave me the time to write the books I always wanted to and to read all the books I always wanted to. Also, it allowed me to listen to a lot of music and watch a lot of movies, web series, and cricket. As I write this I am watching the Pakistan versus England test match. Recently, I even did some travelling. What were the costs of this?  

One, if I had continued doing what I was doing I would have probably been making much more money than I currently am.  

Two, if had continued doing what I was doing, money would come regularly at the end of the month and would go directly into my bank account, irrespective of the total amount of work and the quality of work I did during that month. So, I could afford to have a few bad months.  

Currently, I work on a piece rate system where the more pieces I write the more money I make. No wonder Karl Marx did not like this. As he wrote in the first volume of Capital: “Piece-wages become… the most fruitful source of reductions in wages… committed by the capitalists." Of course, in my case, this is a choice I made. On days I choose not to write I don’t make money. So, in that sense, this is the opportunity cost of the opportunity cost of not having a full-time job.  

In fact, now that I have been on both sides, having worked on a salary and as a freelancer, I can say this with utmost confidence that the salaried lot really don’t appreciate the fact that they are salaried, as much as they should.  

Third, other than being a freelancer, I am also single. Now, that among other things, ensures that I usually have control over my time and I can do things I want to do at any given point of time, on most days. I don’t need to plan much. I don’t need to form a WhatsApp group to decide on the time and place for the next meeting, personal or otherwise, and then keep following up on that.  

Of course, for all those married male friends who keep sending all the sad stereotypical wife jokes to me, I would like to say that being single also comes with an opportunity cost. As Christopher Fowler writes in the novel London Bridge is Falling Down: “Spending too much time alone isn’t good for you. First you are independent, then you’re stubborn, then you become strange." I think my degeneration has been quicker than most and I am somewhere between the stubborn and strange stage right now. But that’s an opportunity cost I have been happy to pay.  

On the flip side, if I had continued working full-time for a media house, I would have probably not written the books I did or read the books I did. Neither would I have watched all the cricket that I have. I would also been unhappier, dissatisfied and much more of a cynic than I actually am. Of course, there is no way to know this for sure, given that life has no counterfactuals.  

So, what’s the point of this? What’s the solution? What’s the right answer? Or something that can be summarised in one line for a LinkedIn lesson? Well, as the economist Thomas Sowell puts it: “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs." Life is like that. Whatever you do there is an opportunity cost.  

***** 

So, I am done with Rankin’s Rebus books. What will I read now? I have started reading Christopher Fowler’s series of 20 books featuring Detectives Bryant and May. I had read the first book in the series Full Dark House some time back and I am currently reading the final twentieth book in the series, London Bridge is Falling Down, and really enjoying it.  

Now, you might ask why I skipped the eighteen books in between. Well, I haven’t. It’s just that the twentieth book in the series was lying around and I felt like reading it. Interestingly, the book has a character called Meera Mangeshkar. I guess it’s probably inspired by Lata Mangeshkar’s not so famous sister Meena Mangeshkar.  

Talking about inspired names, the American crime fiction writer Michael Connelly’s book The Late Show had this line: “The coroner herself, Jayalalithaa Panneerselvam, was on scene." Or that, John le Carré’s Agent Running in the Field had this line: “The tortuous bowling action of India’s spin bowler Kuldeep Yadav."  

Well, the opportunity cost that I have paid for has also led to the accumulation of a lot of useless information in my head that I am currently showing off and passing on. Now, you, dear reader, can spread it further, and pay an opportunity cost for my opportunity cost. Or as the old cliché goes, and which I haven’t used in this newsletter for a while, there are no free lunches, neither in economics, nor in life. If nothing, there is always an opportunity cost.  

PS: Going back to physical books means that I need more space to store them given that I am not emotionally mature enough about giving away every book that I have finished reading, though I do give away a few. And that means I have started running out of space all over again, with books starting to accumulate on top of my suitcases and in front of the TV. And that’s another opportunity cost.