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I'd like to make something bigger than a dent in the concept, myself. But I wouldn't complain if I had more of it. Funny how that works.
When I was small, all my daydreams involved being wealthy enough to ignore money. Incredibly, I'm basically at that point now, except for the part where I have to spend it on crap I don't like, like retirement funds for baby boomers and a dumb war. Those aside, the most striking thing that happened to me when I reached this point was discovering the complex relationship of time and money.
I've talked about this before, though maybe not here, but when you leave school for the working world, you suddenly have more money than time. Things that once seemed ludicrous, like maid services or dealership car repair, suddenly make perfect sense. Building your own computer becomes a chore instead of recreation.
And I've heard both "time is money" and "money is time", and I think they're both true and both wrong. Yes, time is valuable and can be used to create value, and the use of money can allow you to choose more freely how you spend your time, at the end of the day they're really independent things because only money can have a negative balance. There's no such thing as "time debt". No time credit rating or "borrowed" time.
I prefer the idea that Money = (Energy / Elapsed Time) * Knowledge. Energy / Elapsed Time is how you measurepower, thus simplifying it to Money = Power * Knowledge. So in this formula, as your energy or knowledge go up, so does your money, and as your efficiency decreases (or elapsed time goes up), your money goes down.
For example, a fresh college graduate at a startup has plenty of Energy, but little Knowledge and works slowly. Let's say this enthusiastic graduate comes to work with 2000 joules of energy, takes 2 hours to fix a bug, and brings 18 months of practical knowledge to the position:
( 2000J / 7200 s ) * 18 months = 5 magical money units
His manager, a senior programmer that cut his teeth on Deep Blue, comes with much more Knowledge and more efficiency, but less Energy. His results for the same bug:
( 500J / 1800 s ) * 120 months = 33 magical money units
That looks about right. After you've been doing anything for 10 years, you probably don't have to worry too much about making money doing it if you're fast and want to put your energy into it. It's also reasonable to think that the senior programmer has 6 times the earning capacity of a fresh-faced graduate (in fact, that's probably a conservative estimate).
So, if you want to make a lot of money, just find ways to mess with your inputs to this formula. Find an activity for which you have a lot of energy (interest) or can do very efficiently, and start increasing your knowledge and experience doing it. Don't do things you have little energy for, or you'll get stuck with a high knowledge multiplier compensating for a low-energy task.
Relating the results of this formula to Happiness is left as an exercise for the reader.
When I was small, all my daydreams involved being wealthy enough to ignore money. Incredibly, I'm basically at that point now, except for the part where I have to spend it on crap I don't like, like retirement funds for baby boomers and a dumb war. Those aside, the most striking thing that happened to me when I reached this point was discovering the complex relationship of time and money.
I've talked about this before, though maybe not here, but when you leave school for the working world, you suddenly have more money than time. Things that once seemed ludicrous, like maid services or dealership car repair, suddenly make perfect sense. Building your own computer becomes a chore instead of recreation.
And I've heard both "time is money" and "money is time", and I think they're both true and both wrong. Yes, time is valuable and can be used to create value, and the use of money can allow you to choose more freely how you spend your time, at the end of the day they're really independent things because only money can have a negative balance. There's no such thing as "time debt". No time credit rating or "borrowed" time.
I prefer the idea that Money = (Energy / Elapsed Time) * Knowledge. Energy / Elapsed Time is how you measurepower, thus simplifying it to Money = Power * Knowledge. So in this formula, as your energy or knowledge go up, so does your money, and as your efficiency decreases (or elapsed time goes up), your money goes down.
For example, a fresh college graduate at a startup has plenty of Energy, but little Knowledge and works slowly. Let's say this enthusiastic graduate comes to work with 2000 joules of energy, takes 2 hours to fix a bug, and brings 18 months of practical knowledge to the position:
( 2000J / 7200 s ) * 18 months = 5 magical money units
His manager, a senior programmer that cut his teeth on Deep Blue, comes with much more Knowledge and more efficiency, but less Energy. His results for the same bug:
( 500J / 1800 s ) * 120 months = 33 magical money units
That looks about right. After you've been doing anything for 10 years, you probably don't have to worry too much about making money doing it if you're fast and want to put your energy into it. It's also reasonable to think that the senior programmer has 6 times the earning capacity of a fresh-faced graduate (in fact, that's probably a conservative estimate).
So, if you want to make a lot of money, just find ways to mess with your inputs to this formula. Find an activity for which you have a lot of energy (interest) or can do very efficiently, and start increasing your knowledge and experience doing it. Don't do things you have little energy for, or you'll get stuck with a high knowledge multiplier compensating for a low-energy task.
Relating the results of this formula to Happiness is left as an exercise for the reader.
