You have never thought of it as costing anything. Doing it all yourself is just how you are. Then a friend, in the middle of a move, says she didn't ask you because you never ask her. You think about that for a week. I run on this idea that I can do it all myself.
The first of the three is usually the only one that gets counted.
01
What it looks like
A strategy is usually described by what it gets you. It keeps the room calm, gets the work done, keeps you from owing anyone.
Its costs are quieter, and they tend to arrive later and reach more people.
02
Where the cost shows up
In you. This is the tiredness, the resentment, the flat feeling after a win, the evening spent replaying. It is usually the cost that gets noticed first.
In the people around you. A person who never asks for help may leave others with no way to give. A person who agrees with everything may leave a partner unsure what they think. These costs fall on someone else, so they are easy to miss.
In what never gets tested. This one may be the largest, and it can be the hardest to see. A strategy can protect against a fear by keeping the feared thing from getting a chance to happen. So a person may not learn whether it would have.
Under Burden, the fear is that your needs make you too much, and too much gets left. If you never ask, you never find out what people do when you ask. Under Right, the fear is that if you are wrong about this, what else are you wrong about. If you are never wrong out loud, you never see how someone responds when you are.
03
What it buys
The other side has to be counted too, or the count is not honest.
A strategy buys real things. Self-reliance does work. Accuracy does protect. If it bought nothing, it would not have lasted.
The useful question is whether you would still choose it, knowing all three costs.
04
What the count does not tell you
It does not tell you which rule the strategy serves. A cost shows what a strategy takes and not what it is for. Two people can bear the same cost for different reasons.
It also may not point to a rule at all. Some costs are simply part of a busy life, and a strategy that costs little is not worth worrying about.
Finding what is under the strategy is the job of subtraction. If the count leaves you unsure, there is not enough to tell yet, and that is a result.
What it looks like when the cost has grown is on When a Strategy Stops Working.