Do it for the Quality of Life

This article may be more literature than it is a blog post for the past few months have led to a great deal of self-introspection and evaluation. Don't worry I haven't been thinking about the meaning of life the universe and everything in it as there seems to already be an answer for that as derived by a supercomputer which says its 42. 

But 42 is just a number without meaning unless looked at in the context of where the 4 and the 2 came from. Similarly, we look at where we are and evaluate our state of being. 

Last week as I approached the door of another hotel ballroom for my companies Monthly Investors forum, to see the same thing literally, just a different day, different speakers, roughly the same audience and definitely the same food. I saw two gentlemen sitting on a bench. In times past if I walked past that same bench I'd see smokers. But not that day, they looked as if they were visiting on business to Kingston and were about to retire for the evening maybe to catch a flight the next day. I thought to myself one day someone might just pass me on a bench like that in a foreign country, business trip.
After the forum, I passed the empty bench and thought to myself again, "not all that glitters is gold". I was romanticising being a business traveler without thinking it through. What kind of quality of life did these guys actually have? Did they have families back home? Was the younger of the two single because he doesn't have enough time to pin himself down to even commit to a date? 

All questions that boggled my mind. 

In 2009, George Clooney starred in a film called "Up in the Air" to this day it one of my favorite movies. The movie is about a road warrior Ryan Bingham who travels around the US on American Airlines exclusively and fires people for a living. round about the time of the economic downturn and US recession the movie told a relatively true story but at the same time, it romanticized flying but conversely showed how business travelers live. 

All the things you probably hate about traveling – the recycled air, the artificial lighting, the digital juice dispensers, the cheap sushi – are warm reminders that I’m home-

 Ryan Bingham (George Clooney, Up in the Air).

A question seldom answered by the world is how is your quality of life? Most likely phrased; how are you doing? or how are things going? Investopedia does a pretty good job at defining it ... Quality of life is a highly subjective measure of happiness that is an important component of many financial decisions. Factors that play a role in the quality of life vary according to personal preferences, but they often include financial security, job satisfaction, family life, health, and safety. Financial decisions usually involve a tradeoff where the quality of life is decreased in order to save money or, conversely, quality of life is increased by spending more money.

But is there in fact quality of life devoid of money. Most conventional standards of quality of life have to do with Money. For a country to be classified based on income they use GDP per Capita ( everyone's contribution to the countries income) but GDP per capita has holes in it as it doesn' t capture the informal economy which many times in just as large as the formal. 

The Dalai Lama was asked what surprises him most ...his response was...“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” 

We live in a world where we are driven mainly be an external factor, money. The Bible in 1 Timothy 6:10 says that  "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil: which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

Although it talks about the departure from faith its meaning is rooted in a departure from what is important.

What is truly important in life a question which many have asked but have failed to conquer. Our deeds most times do not show that we have an understanding of the important things.  In our pursuit of life, we aspire to be Normal.  Ellen Goodman describes "Normal as getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it." 

We imprison our selves in jobs chained to desks all where we lose ourselves in the grey nature of existing in an office environment we lead lives that as Jay Shetty puts it "The only thing we excel at is Microsoft and the PowerPoint. " 

But then again leaving the job is not an easy thing to do for most. The generation of young workers is generation buried in debt. Student Loans and Credit Card bound us to these desks. We put off things like getting married, having children, purchasing homes and "the lack of money" rules our lives. 

What is your Quality of Life? Are you comfortable with your current situation? Do you see yourself doing what you're doing for the rest of your life? 

If your answer to the last two questions is No and the first I don't know. Then you may need to take a page out of the economists' guidebook. 

Are you using your scarce resources with core patterns and strong principles to maximize the utility of your life?

We are all equipped with the skills and tools that we need to achieve the true quality of life. Quality of life is not determined by how much money you have, what kind of car you drive, what kind of job you have or how famous you are. 

The thing only you can determine your happiness and Greater Happiness- Greater Quality of life

PS: let's Take a lesson from Richest Man in the world


Jeff Bezos has so much money he doesn’t’ know what to do with it—and he didn’t get there by separating his work and home life. There does not necessarily need to be a strict line between work life and home life in order to be successful. He said home life and work life are, in fact, linked.

“This work-life harmony thing is what I try to teach young employees and actually senior executives at Amazon too. But especially the people coming in,” he said. “I get asked about work-life balance all the time. And my view is, that’s a debilitating phrase because it implies there’s a strict trade-off.”
“And the reality is, if I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy,” he said. “And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy. It actually is a circle; it’s not a balance. And I think that is worth everybody paying attention to it.”

Your quality of life is your whole life, not just outside of work

#CollegeEconomist