We were going to give a couch away for free recently so it could be reused by someone in need. However, the service we signed up for refused to accept it due to a small stain – a bizarre/myopic policy.
So, we decided to put it up for sale for a small amount on Craigslist. We got a series of quotes and had someone pick it up within 2 hours.
After this happened, my mind wandered for a few minutes to explore another possibility – had I given this away too cheap? Maybe I could have charged significantly more?
3 reflections –
(1) It is amazing how quickly I went from “So glad we could find another home” to “Should I have charged more?” A full 2 days after writing about moving goalposts. :-)
(2) Money is such an easy factor to optimize for. It is so easy to ignore the many intangible trade-offs because, well, they are intangible.
Beware optimizing for things that are easy to optimize.
(3) The best way to think about optimization is to pick your areas in advance. There are very few areas in life that are worth optimizing. For the rest, best to be a “satisficer” and move on.
