⏳ Life Possibility Frontier

Hey there,

I’m back to the daily routine, sorry if you (Vishal) missed me.

I was thinking about the PPF (Production Possibility Frontier, see below) and how it applies to our lives.

This thought is unfinished but the fundamentals are as follows:

• In life, the production possibility frontier represents one’s richness of life. That could be happiness but I think richness captures more objective measures like variety, excitement etc.

• The axes are income and time freedom. You can either use all your time to make money, to have total time freedom, or some combination of the two.

• The basic aim is to shift the PPF outward, which can be achieved by:

  • Health - if in poor health (i.e. cannot walk), the PPF is small. However, once you achieve a baseline of good health, it opens up many more richer life experiences.

  • People - with more interesting people in your life, the PPF shift outwards based on the experiences you have with those people.

  • Leverage - earning more per unit of time shifts the PPF outwards as you can earn more income for the same time or enjoy time freedom more with the additional money stored.

From what I see in my friends and family, people is the most ignored variable as people get comfortable with their current circles and meeting new people is considered too much effort.

Leverage is the highest focus for most but sometimes it comes at the expense of health. Although health is not a big factor on the current PPF, above a baseline level of health, and only really impacts the far future.

My takeaway from this is that I want to pick goals and challenges that feed each of these buckets (either individually or cumulatively). If something takes me away from health and interesting people for more leverage, I need to strongly consider if that is worth it. Whereas if something increases all three, I can be more confident in diving head first into that goal.

People is a video on dating I found useful 🙂 

Kind regards,

Jay