Challenge, Cost=Benefit?

Two beers in, each. Two Averna-Sauer coming. Sun is setting under Vienna’s Newbar.

“Kruxi, your cost benefit analysis makes no sense. I do not think that the benefits of my job outweigh the costs. It’s the very costly challenges that make up the sweet benefits.”

She is right. I have no answer. She continues. I am annoyed. She is right! I am excited. There really is a problem: Let’s try to solve it!

I postulate: Cost-benefit analysis explains all human action. People do things to maximize utility, thus benefits must always outweigh costs.

Challenge: What if the costs are the benefits, the challenge = the reward.

3 formal ways of putting this in economic terms:

2. Stick it in the cost or benefit column: Decide whether the challenge is a net positive or net negative. Let us assume that it is a net positive. Then put the whole thing as +1 utility, cause you did derive a lot of benefit from doing this job, but the challenging bits discount it to a small net positive.

1. Separate them: challenge is cost: -5 utility; benefit from challenge: +6 utility. Problem: can those two be separated. I feel like the challenge really is cost and benefit at the same time, inseparable.

2. Separate them in time: Challenge is now, benefit is later. Runs into the same problems: trying to separate something that might not be separable.

Is “challenging” a cost, or a benefit, or both. Pls Help