The problem with being an economist

Ah, economics - the dismal science - it's given me a way of looking at the world and understanding part of how it works, it's given me a set of tools to look at complex problems, and it's helped me develop my critical thinking and reasoning skills. There's a certain sense of satisfaction I get from trying to find rational behaviour, and being able to explain why something counter-intuitive might be rational behaviour. For instance, lately I've been talking to some of my friends about why deferring your HECS debt for as long as possible sometimes makes sense.

But, there is a problem with being an economist, and it's probably the reason why it's called 'the dismal science'. Being trained in economics internalises a fundamental concept known as 'opportunity cost'. Opportunity cost is what you give up or forego to do something. Applied in an economic sense, the opportunity cost of investing your money in one place is that you give up other investment options, or that you forego easy access to your money. There are many opportunity costs to every decision that you make. The reason that this becomes problematic, for me at least, is that opportunity cost also applies to time.

The time spent doing one activity, say writing this blog, comes at the cost of the time foregone to undertake another activity, say playing drums. This causes me no end of internal questioning - "is what I am doing the best use of my time?" - and unease when I am not doing something - "I should be doing this or that". Admittedly, this line of thinking has it's pros. It's probably the reason I am a motivated person, and why I have managed to achieve what I've achieved. But it also has it's downsides. For one thing, it's incredibly difficult to shut it off. If I do anything, even if I enjoy what I'm doing - say playing video games - I can't help but be overcome with guilt that I've indulged for too long when I could have done other things, like cleaning the house, reading, taking the dog for a walk, spending time with Jess, going for a bike ride, listening to music etc. etc. etc. But likewise, the same applies if I do any of those activities in place of the first one. This is part of the reason that one of my resolutions for this year was to practice mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the discipline of being right in the moment. To invest yourself fully into whatever you are doing (and just as importantly - not doing) right this minute, without your mind racing down endless to-do lists. Admittedly, it sounds very 'New Age'-y and a bit hippy, but many problems caused by mindless doing. Mindless busywork, where you become stressed because there's always too much to do. Mindless eating, which leads to weight and health issues because you miss signals of satiety from your body. The list goes on.

We're all confronted with a shortage of time and because of this there is an emphasis on making the most of it. We've all seen the 'Live each day like it's your last' and the 'Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today', but in my opinion these sorts of platitudes are toxic. We're swamped with the idea that productivity is the greatest pursuit of all - "if only this were easier, then we'd have more time" - but the fact is like the 'hedonic treadmill' as soon as we become more productive, we find other things to fill up that time. We can hope that we fill them with more leisurely activities, for instance I'm writing this blog to the whirr of my Roomba, but I'd hazard that most of the time we don't. Partially, this has to do with increasing our standard of living, but as standards of living rise, so do our expectations. What was once good enough is no longer good enough - there are many examples of this: house sizes have increased dramatically, and are inhabited by less people now than before; public schools provide a good education for all, but most parents would probably prefer to send their kids to a private school if they could afford it.

I find that I sway between two minds - one tells me that time is short, that every minute should be put to it's best use, that I should be productive; the other tells me that there is plenty of time to accomplish the things I want to do, so long as I keep chipping away at them. To be honest, I haven't quite resolved this quandary myself - but I have at least identified it as an issue to be worked on. My apologies there isn't a nice, tidy resolution to this post - but hey, that's kind of like living in the real world, isn't it?