Skipping the party to finish the project isn’t missing out. It’s opting in to something else.

Every choice has a cost, and the one you notice is always the visible option you turned down. Staying in to work looks like absence, because the party has a place and a guest list while what you chose has neither. Both are trades. The framing that calls one of them missing out is simply the one with more people in it.

Name what you are choosing rather than what you are skipping, and keep that honest. If the work does not actually get done, the trade never happened. Enjoy the choice properly or go to the party.