My husband I talk about making high value decisions pretty frequently. I was thinking about high value decisions recently, when the ultimate low value decision popped into my head.

At my office, we tend to keep the batteries “hidden”, since they are relatively expensive, and we don’t want people just taking batteries whenever they feel like it. One day, the president of the company was looking for some batteries. He spent 30 minutes walking around, asking if anyone had any batteries, digging through cabinets, and generally wasting time trying to find some batteries. Our CFO commented that it was completely stupid to hide the batteries and make the highest paid employee of the company use time to hunt for batteries. We gave the president his own box of batteries after that incident.

What about the people that drive 5 miles to save five cents per gallon on gas? They’ve probably spent their full fifty cents of savings driving to the other gas station! This is another one of those things that if you actually knew and considered the numbers, it would make much more sense to just stop at the gas station you’re closest to at the moment.

How often do you make the wrong sacrifice? Some people think that they’ll take a longer commute, but at least the rent is cheaper! But, did they calculate the increased cost for gas, and worse, the increased cost of their time?  How do you go about making high value decisions?