Napoleon Bonaparte never painted a single stroke, never penned a line of poetry, but he understood something that every artist, writer, and visionary wrestles with daily: sacrifice. He didn’t become Emperor of France by playing it safe, by hedging his bets. He put it all on the line, every single time. But what most people forget is that with every battlefield victory, he was losing something just as valuable—time, resources, the energy to build bridges instead of burn them.
For creatives, opportunity cost is the constant whisper in the background: What could you be doing instead? What are you sacrificing? We sit with a blank page, a half-finished project, and ask ourselves: Do I keep going? Or is there another idea, a different path, that might offer more? Every brushstroke, every keystroke, every decision we make is a declaration of war against the alternatives.
So how do you decide? How do you, like Napoleon Bonaparte, sacrifice one opportunity for the chance to seize another? Because make no mistake—every choice you make has a price. And sometimes, the value of what you leave behind is far greater than what you gain.