

Do what defines you - jgrahamc
http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=596

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dsplittgerber
"Wealth comes in many forms, including both money and time. Consider that most
of the world spends the majority of their time trying to acquire money,
viewing it as the key to doing what they want to do. In reality, all they’re
doing is spending wealth (in the form of time) only to earn it back in the
form of money, so they can then use it to buy back time."

The author assumes that people spend the majority of their time trying to
acquire money without any other motive than acquiring money to further other
goals. This argument fails when you do what you do not only because it brings
you money but also because you like doing it per se. You may want to do the
activity and at the same time get an objective measurement of how much wealth
you create for other people by getting paid money for it, in some way or
another.

~~~
_delirium
It's certainly not true that the amount of money you get paid is "an objective
measurement of how much wealth you create for other people". It's quite
possible to make money in lots of ways, some of which also create wealth for
other people, some of which are relatively neutral for other people, and some
of which take it away from other people. I'm not aware of any general formula
for determining which is which, except perhaps in the extremes (obviously,
various kinds of scam artists fall into the 3rd category).

~~~
dsplittgerber
I think it's actually the most objective measurement there is. How else do you
get paid other than by people voluntarily assigning your services or product a
certain monetary value they would like to pay you?

~~~
raganwald
We had this long debate when some people claimed that the only objective
measurement of the value of your work how much you get paid.

It's true that's highly objective, but that doesn't mean it's right. Compare
this to objective metrics for programmers. Lines of Code? Hours at the desk?
Bugs assigned to them? Whatever metric you use, somebody will find a way to
game it, proving that the metric may be useful in some cases but it is not
strongly correlated with anything other than the desire to score highly.

I have a theory that metrics are best when secret. If somehow we had money but
nobody thought it was important, you might get very valuable information by
seeing how has the most of it. But the moment people start valuing a high
score, then they start gaming it and the next thing you know you've given
Bernie Madoff a high score.

To respond directly to your point, people do voluntarily assign a high value
to your services or product when they pay you. The trouble is, they do so with
highly incomplete information in an environment where the people playing the
game manipulate the information to obtain the highest valuations. In the end,
money often ends up being highly correlated with an ability to manipulate who
receives what information rather than any underlying service or product.

~~~
dsplittgerber
You raise interesting points. I disagree on keeping metrics secret though.
Keeping the value system for evaluating people's performance and the wealth
they create secret, only leads to subjective standards and gives the keeper of
the secret far too much power. To the contrary, I think that only metrics as
known and objective as monetary value can ever be useful, as otherwise lots of
productivity would be wasted in pursuit of the wrong (secret) metrics.

It may be true that at any given point in time, there may be some wrongfully
inflated monetary high scores. I think they always get detected over time,
though. Are there any wrongfully inflated high scores over the course of time?
I think not, as there is wealth to be created in detecting the frauds.
Ultimately, I think, over time there are not as much incentives to manipulate
information in order to wrongfully inflate your wealth as there are to produce
sustainable wealth.

~~~
Psyonic
One of the best ways to improve your wealth is imperialism, i.e. taking what
isn't yours, but on a grand scale. It has worked for royalty forever, and
while it's out in the open, nothing was ever done about it.

What did the royalty do in Arab countries that the common person didn't? Lay
claim to the land containing oil. Scarcity can create value, but it's hard to
argue that the person who claims it is really "creating value," as anyone else
who owned it could do the same. At least not in the same sense that an artist
creates something new out of nothing.

------
apsurd
I don't think it should necessarily be said that a person who chases money,
chases wealth. Trying to aquire _an excess_ amount of money is a form of
chasing wealth yes (which the author is mainly addressing). But to say that
spending Time making money is somehow not an ideal trade off is pretty
nonsensical. Surviving is pretty important. And thus having food, water,
clothing, and shelter is pretty important. Should we all grow and prepare our
own food? Sew our own clothes? Build our own houses? Society as we know it has
made survival, in its raw sense, pretty trivial, so long as we align ourselves
(more or less) within the system. I don't see how that's necessarily a
detrimental or even less-effective/efficient/optimal use of ones life,
regardless of whether or not _how_ you make your money is "truly one's
calling".

 _"If your calling in life is to be a musician, what are you doing wasting
your life as a store clerk? Isn’t your life more valuable than your job? Part
of walking in who you are is being bold enough to throw away the parts of your
life that aren’t valuable, in order to chase after what is."_

Surving is a waste of life? Survival is not valuable?

------
coliveira
Saying that money buys time is not really true. It can buy, but it all depends
on how you want to live. For example, if you are fine with living on the
streets, you don't even need money: become a homeless and you will have all
the time you ever needed. To live as a middle class person you need some more
money, but how much money you need to live like Michael Jackson? Not even him
was able to make that amount of money.

So, basically what you are buying with money is a lifestyle. You shouldn't
think in terms of time you are buying, but what kind of life you want to live.

------
barrkel
Money is fungible; time is not. Not all wealth is time. Thus it makes sense to
trade time for money, and money for other forms of wealth.

But yes, ideally way you trade your time, i.e. the wealth you create with your
productive time, should involve the things you want to do in life. But we are
not always so lucky - and it is not always a good thing, as doing something
for external reward can destroy intrinsic motivation.

