If there’s one thing an economist loves to spot, it is a trade-off. A trade-off puts us on familiar terrain and let’s us feel (not for the first time) that undergraduate microeconomics can make order out of every problem. Tom Sowell captured this attitude when he famously declared, “there are no solutions, only trade-offs.” [1]
But of course not everything we do in life is traded off against something else. Many things we do are completely complementary with one another. For example, spending some time eating doesn’t conflict with my desire to get my work done. If I didn’t eat or drink at all I would pretty quickly find I wasn’t getting any work done at all! On the other hand long boozy lunches with friends every day could well conflict with my productivity. Between these two extremes there is some amount of effort dedicated to eating that doesn’t come at the expense of any other goal I have. This idea is represented in the figure below where the black line indicates the maximum amount of ‘other activities’ I get can get done for any amount of time spent meeting my body’s need for sustenance. We can label the amount of time on eating that come at no cost to other activities as point A.
We can do the same with a range of other activities that we might neglect for fear that we ‘don’t have time.’
Not doing any exercise is bad for life expectancy, general health and energy levels. Moderate exercise a few times a week is likely to ‘pay for itself’ by making your mind and body work more effectively and longer throughout the rest of your life, almost irrespective of what else you are doing. On the other hand lengthy marathon training wouldn’t improve your productivity in the rest of life sufficiently to come for free: you would have to give something else up, whether it’s other recreation, time with family and friends, or work accomplishments. But failing to do any exercise because you ‘don’t have time’ doesn’t make any sense. Initially exercise would give you more time than it used up!
Friends of mine who spend a few hours meditating a week say that it improves their focus enough through the rest of life and replaces sleep such that overall it is a free activity.
A notable candidate is investment in strong relationships with friends and family. For most people these relationships are necessary to feel satisfied and motivated in life and buffer us against difficulties we face.
Neglecting our physical, mental and social health may help us get more other things done temporarily, but is a lousy strategy in the long run.
Some actual figures for how much of these different activities do actually come at no cost would be very useful research in my opinion, though I expect they will vary quite a bit between people.
Other Details
The amount of time we should spend on one activity to improve our performance in another depends on the ratio of how long we spend doing each. For instance, if I start working 8 hours a day and then take half an hour out of that for exercise, then that exercise only has to enhance my productivity the rest of the time by 7% for me to break even on work output. On the other hand, if I an work only 1 hour and switch to spending half of that exercising, I would have to work double as effectively the rest of the time to come out ahead. If you wanted to use support activities to get more of everything else done, you would have to take a little bit of time out of all your other activities, rather than just out of a specific activity you dislike or don’t spend much time on!
A related point to keep in mind is that many of these ‘self-care’ activities are probably substitutes for one another. Someone who spends a lot of time nourishing their friendships and staying physically healthy would not get such a great benefit from meditation on top of those as someone who otherwise works
Finally, I should add that I’m not saying that the amount of time on an activity which comes for ‘free’ is the right amount to spend on it. If you enjoy long lunches for their own sake then you may want to spend much more than that minimum amount of time eating. But if you wish you had more time to spend caring for your wellbeing, then doing less than the ‘free amount’ is throwing away an opportunity to have more of everything you want!
[1] In my view most people are biased against noticing trade-offs, especially when doing so shows things about them which they would rather not acknowledge, but that’s another story – or at least blog post.
Tagged: economics, efficiency, health, personality, psychology
