Maintaining personal equilibrium

The worst professor I ever had was an economics professor.

His class was an introduction to both macroeconomics and microeconomics. It was the only class I ever fell asleep in, in high school or college. His class was also the only one I ever got a D in.

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But you know what was the smoking gun that proves just how bad he was?

I made it through that economics class never without learning the concept of a supply-demand curve. (To be fair, he tried to teach the concept, but the lesson didn’t stick with me.)

I could go on and on about how terrible this professor was because he couldn’t get his textbook published and we had to print it off from the internet, because, the way he told it, his book was just that damn good even though no academic publisher would touch it. (Printing his book also led to an incident that resulted in my computer lab printing privileges being temporarily suspended. Man, I’m really getting worked up in this edition.)

I could go on and on about his horrible sports analogies and how his voice would go through peaks and valleys at inappropriate moments that missed the dramatic effect he had hoped for.

But, really, the fact I left his class without understanding one of the foundational principles of economics—maybe the foundational principle of economics—says it all.

Eventually, I had to take more economics classes, because I switched majors after crashing and burning out of computer science. (What the hell was I thinking, trying my hand at the College of Engineering? I’m a writer, man—an artist!)

In stark contrast to the experience under my first economics professor, I learned the basics of the supply-demand curve in five minutes—maybe even two—with the way this second professor taught it.

For those unfamiliar, the supply-demand curve says that wherever supply and demand align, you find equilibrium (the ideal price for your product or service). As supply rises, the price usually lowers. But as demand rises, the price usually rises as well.

It’s funny that I didn’t grasp this concept early on, because the supply-demand curve is one of the crucial concepts through which I now view my life. I’m no economist, but I often examine the world around me through the lens of economics.

My life is basically a daily struggle to find and maintain equilibrium, though I often say balance rather than equilibrium. You can pick hairs and argue semantics all you want, but regardless of your preferred term, the basic concepts are the same.

I often pair this concept of personal equilibrium with a quote from noted economist Thomas Sowell:

There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.

I see Sowell’s wisdom every day, as every choice changes the details of the world around us. Every action is an input into The Simulation we call life, and every action changes the values of the variables we operate in, through, and around. We humans may not think explicitly in terms of constants and variables, but we still navigate these concepts thousands of times a day. We consider these concepts in our daily calculations. Because so many of us miss this connection, we don’t give humanity as a whole enough credit. We credit only easy-to-define variables as worth tracking, so we buy into the idea that computers and artificial intelligence are so much more capable than we are. (Machines are more capable than we are when focused on certain tasks, but humans are far more versatile than we give credit. Unfortunately, our dominant brand of capitalism praises specialization but discounts generalization. More corporate leaders should read David Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Thrive in a Specialized World.1)

So-called solutions often create unforeseen problems. (Maybe you’ve heard this concept referred to as unintended consequences2—another concept with a background in economics!)

If you think I’m a terrible economist, you’ll be delighted to hear I’m an even worse mathematician. Yet I rely on simple math to check in on my personal equilibrium.

Recently, I simplified my life calculus when I realized most of my life fits into three simple buckets:

1. Work
2. Friends and family
3. Myself

And the calculus of my average week looks something like this:

1. Work and sleep (~60% of my week)
2. Friends and family, and myself (~40% of my week)

Here’s a visual if that’s more your thing:

I can’t say how much of my time outside work and sleep goes to friends and family, and how much goes to myself. But I know that work and sleep eat up the majority of my time. And that category eats up even more time if you factor in getting ready for work, commuting, and those odd days when I sit in my car in the driveway and cry before I put on a good face for the family.

My free time is precious. I can never have enough, because I need more on a daily basis than there are hours in a day. So, I’ve become more selective about what I should do. Doing too much of what I view as meaningless cuts into my personal economics and throws off my personal equilibrium. I get out of balance, and that’s when I get nasty.

If you read this newsletter, chances are you see some things the same as I do. Or you can at least entertain the ideas I share.

So, if you find yourself out of balance and unsure what exactly is wrong, try looking at your life through the lens of personal equilibrium.

Maybe it’ll answer some questions. Maybe it won’t. But hopefully the act of looking at something in a way untaught in textbooks will lead to your own revelation.

Goodbye. Adios. Adieu.