The Opportunity Cost of Our Time

Time is money... or is it more than that?

I always talk about bang for your buck with patients or people I am training. People can grasp that they want to get the most value for the paid dollars or for their time as they can. To be most effective in any one aspect, it only makes sense to focus the most on those aspects that will achieve the most sufficient results. Stephen Covey lists it has one of his 7 habits of Highly Effective People: “Do first things first.” What happens when we don’t do first things first?

What I did not realize was that there was an economic term for “bang for your buck,” which is “opportunity cost.” Opportunity cost is essentially what you have to give up in order to make anyone decision. In my personal life, having a job costs me the opportunities of having free time to read and spend time with friends. In chiropractic, the time I spend playing games costs me opportunities to learn new techniques or adjusting people. No choice is either right or wrong from person to person, but individually, each choice does bring us closer or farther away from our goals in life.

Let’s bring our attention to exercise. The majority of people love using machines in the gym. They either are just comfortable using them or don’t realize the huge opportunity cost they have by giving up functional exercises. This example is easy to understand by examining the bodybuilder. Bodybuilders spend anywhere from 1-2 hrs per workout, 4-7 days per week. Sometimes more, sometimes less. They need to spend this amount of time in the gym because they choose small muscle group exercises over large ones. For example, they choose leg extensions (exercising the quadriceps) over squats. Here is the opportunity cost of choosing leg extensions over squats: the lost opportunity to…

1. exercise the gluteal muscles, hamstrings, leg, and core musculature
2. to obtain that spike in anabolic metabolism with hormone release such as testosterone, GH, etc.
3. increased cardiovascular effort and calories burned resulting in fat loss
4. to teach the body how to move correctly in daily life as to prevent injury
5. to maintain flexibility and range of motion as age increases.

This opportunity cost by giving up squats and isolating muscles is HUGE! This is why bodybuilders spend so much time in the gym. The only opportunity cost I could think of when it comes to choosing squats over leg extensions is the increased hypertrophy that comes with isolation exercise, although an extraordinary amount of time is necessary to do this. Luckily, most bodybuilders are extremely dedicated and are willing to give the time. But for people who are exercising to lose weight and work on overall fitness, it does not make sense. Using myself as an example, a 30 minute workout a few days per week is sufficient for me, and that includes foam rolling and dynamic mobility exercises.

Now, let’s bring the notion of opportunity cost to chiropractic. There are dozens of different ways to treat musculoskeletal conditions as there are dozens of ways to adjust patients. Certain coaches in the profession stand by their comment that technique doesn’t matter when it comes to your success as a chiropractor. This may be true when it comes to teaching patients about vitalism, because this just necessitates belief in the human body. But when it comes to actual mechanical pain, certain treatments are more effective than other ones. For example, lower back pain is obviously very common. Many of us, including myself, have treated just the low back and gotten some relief. The opportunity cost of simply massaging the low back and adjusting it is as follows:

lost opportunity to: 1) educate why they have their low back pain, how to get themselves out of it, and how to prevent it in the future, 2) treat the PRIMARY cause/tissue of the pain generating tissue, which can often be the hip musculature being tight so that load/stress is transferred from the hips to the low back 3) Teach them how to perform dynamic mobility exercises so they can relieve their own inflexibility issues and then strengthen with the proper functional movement.

Personal training and chiropractic treatment are just two examples I’ve chosen to see how opportunity cost plays a role in daily life choices. However, it is helpful to use the scope of opportunity cost in all of the choices I make in order to be sure I water all the plants that need watering, or in other words, spend time in all areas in my life that I value. They include spending time with loved ones, nurturing my chiropractic education, and maybe most importantly, learning and growing as a human being. But writing is important to me as well, so the opportunity goal of this note is small, about 30 minutes of time I’d spend hypnotized by the television.