Productivity has become a keyword that drives all modern life, and we tend to decide what to spend our time and energy on based on the anticipated return on investment (ROI)! The sum total of everything that you do constitutes the Gross Product of You(GPY), very much like a country has a GDP! Now of course, you could have done so much more had you been infinitely productive, but our bodies and minds need downtime, so your potential GPY will always be more than your actual GPY! But that’s okay, for even economists take a kinder view of the economy than we do sometimes of ourselves! Too much, and like the economy, our lives can overheat!

The free market has become the modern norm, which takes a view that supply and demand somehow magically balance out, without the need for any intervention. Apply that principle to our lives, and it would perhaps be the equivalent of the inputs and outputs would match, and we could operate on autopilot. What we however learnt the hard way through the economic difficulties is that some amount of Keynesian regulation is still needed as much in the free market as it is in our lives, or else our temptations and desires will have a free run, resulting in an inflation which would cause us to live beyond our means!

Regulation of course some as much from policy, as it does discipline. We can lay out the best plans and rules for ourselves, but until we can’t hold ourselves accountable to sticking by them, they aren’t really of much use. Practices such as meditation and mindfulness are great with helping cultivating a sense of centredness, from which we can operate with greater responsibility towards ourselves as well as society.

Society is a framework which supports the exchange of goods and services, a give and take. When we take more than we can give, then we are running a negative balance of trade, and sooner rather than later, this is bound to catch up with us. This is also true of relationships, which should be evenly balanced, without overburdening one partner, be that economically or otherwise.

In life, as in economics, status quo’s cause stagnation and growth is imperative to keep us going. Growth, of course, needs to be sustainable rather than a hyper inflationary demand on our time in the expectation of an unrealistic goal, which can quickly spiral out of control. It’s important to take a longer term strategic view of life, rather than trying to find shortcuts. After all, we harbour collective ambitions of creating a collective 5T$ economy, and this will only be possible iif each of us plays our part!

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