What is a Cost/Benefit Analysis

…with regards to Life

You often hear the phrase cost-benefit analysis in business circles. The goal there is usually profit:

Will the expenses be justified by the return?

But the concept translates beautifully into real life, too—even if no one ever taught us how to use it that way.

In School

In school, you're told what to do. For everything.

• There’s one right answer.
• The bell tells you when you're done.
• The teacher’s approval signals success.
• You raise your hand and wait to be called on.

It's a lot of spoon-feeding.
It’s efficient.
It keeps everything moving.

But it also shuts down a really important question:

What matters most to me—and is it worth it?

You may start to wonder:

• Who decided this is what I need to learn?
• How does one curriculum fit every person?
• What am I actually being prepared for?

And once you tug on that thread, the whole sweater starts to unravel.

Standardization doesn't leave much room for individualization—and that’s what we actually need to build a meaningful adult life.

Why It's Hard to Shift

I won’t go too deep into why schools operate this way—but let’s just say: it wasn’t designed with individuality in mind.
Whether for industrial efficiency, training factory workers to be easier to manage or crowd control (maybe those are the same?), the system was built to move large numbers of kids from Point A to Point B.

But we don’t live in the Industrial Age anymore.
We’re in the Information Age.
And schools haven’t caught up.

That’s part of the reason why independent thought feels so hard after graduation—most young adults just haven’t had much practice at it.

For Unschoolers

But not so for the unschooled teen.

They’ve been practicing real-life decision-making all along.
They’ve weighed pros and cons for all sorts of opportunities that have crossed their paths.
They’ve chosen paths—and changed their minds.
They’ve made mistakes—and learned to see those as data for the next decision, not disasters to be ashamed of.

Why am I bringing this up?

Unschoolers have been doing cost-benefit analysis for years.

Not in spreadsheets.
Not for profit.
But in everyday life.

And the result?
They’re not paralyzed by the fear of doing it "wrong."

They’ve been trusted to navigate uncertainty, and now they trust themselves to do it again.