As a teenager, Thomas Maloney desperately wanted to be a writer. Instead, he became what he calls a “bifurcator”: he studied physics, went to work for a hedge fund, and now writes novels in his spare time. As he wrote in an essay for the Aeon website, that choice has haunted him ever since. Is he a sellout? Was he given a chance to make his mark on the world, only to falter at the crucial moment, choosing a comfortable but less remarkable life instead? “By dividing finite time and energy between two endeavours,” Maloney wrote, “bifurcators inevitably feel they aren’t doing either as well as they could.” Life “seems like a pretty special opportunity, after all”; it feels wrong not to seize it with both hands. His essay concluded with a measured defence of his decision to compromise, but he didn’t dodge the truth: a compromise it certainly was.

It’s a bit of a luxury, of course, even to face such a dilemma – art or money? – to begin with. But the question of whether to compromise isn’t confined to such cases. It infects romance, when people wonder whether to “settle” for an imperfect partner. It’s at the heart of “work-life balance” – will you betray your talents if you choose work that lets you spend more time on your kids, or your kids if you prioritise your talents? – and numerous other life-choices, such as whether to have kids at all, or where to live.

My only addendum to Maloney’s reflections would be a point that’s obvious yet frequently overlooked, and which I’ve always found deeply liberating: we’re all bifurcators. When you get right down to it, compromise isn’t a route some people choose. It’s a fate none of us can avoid.

I’m referring to “opportunity cost”, the economists’ term for the fact that every decision to do anything comes at a price – financial, spiritual or otherwise – because of all the other things you could have done with your resources, but didn’t. As finite humans, we have limited time, attention, energy, money and luck. But the number of things we can want to do, or feel duty-bound to do, is basically infinite. So compromise is baked into every choice.

Go all-in on your ambition to work as a poet, and you’ll probably be sacrificing material comforts. Break off a relationship on the grounds that you refuse to settle, and you’ll be settling instead for having to invest your time in seeking someone better, plus the risk that you won’t find them.

None of this means life’s compromises aren’t more painful for some people than others, thanks to societal and economic pressures. Nor does it mean that, since compromise is inevitable, it doesn’t matter which choices you make. But it’s an important perspective-shift to see that the question isn’t whether to compromise, but how.

Since it’s inevitable, you can stop agonising about how to avoid compromise, or regretting that you failed to avoid it. You can focus instead, as the author Gregg Krech puts it in The Art Of Taking Action, on “becoming a better procrastinator”. In other words, of all the things you’d like to do with your life, you’re going to be putting something off. Most things, actually. So the only remaining question is: which ones?

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Barbara Sher’s classic manual Refuse To Choose! offers career strategies for anyone horrified at the notion of choosing only one line of work.

oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com