We’re two weeks into January, which means the vast majority of New Year's resolutions are approaching abandonment.
The average resolution lasts about 3 weeks. The gyms are crowded during the month of January, but slowly thin out to the regular crowd by February. Dry January starts with lofty ambitions to purge the indulgences of the winter solstice, but can quickly become a social and lifestyle tax.
Change is expensive. Improvement of any kind - especially self improvement - requires dedication and commitment. In a bubble, we can easily envision our brand new selves rising from the ashes of last year, a phoenix born anew. Reality is much harsher.
There is a cost to every gain. Anxiety comes from not being able to unwind with our friends and a glass of wine at the end of the week, and fatigue grinds us from pushing those early AM workouts.
It’s easy to feel like a failure when you don’t meet your own expectations. But before feeling down on why you didn’t become a marathon runner this year, consider what you have to give up to get there.
For self improvement in January, I’m going to propose taking a page from economics to frame your expectations. Curate your life like a portfolio.
The concept of Pareto Efficiency is particularly interesting here. The theory was developed by an Italian economist around the turn of last century as he studied welfare economics and income distribution. It generally states that a situation is Pareto efficient if there is no improvement available to one component, that does not come at the expense of another.
Applying that to your “personality portfolio”, you’re at a place of Pareto efficiency if you find that when you spend more time working out at the gym, it means you get to spend less time with your family. Your pants fit better, but you’re also missing Sunday dinner.
The picture below shows what a Pareto Frontier looks like for an imaginary product. The different possible combinations are represented by dots, with the ideal frontier being the orange curve.
Each product has the trilemma of price, shipping speed, and quality. Sacrificing on craftsmanship produces a cheaper product faster. As we scroll through Amazon, we’re making those tradeoffs subconsciously - what’s the cheapest looking option that will do the job and also ships via Prime?
Each of us will have our own definition of what matters. There is no single choice that is the best. That’s why it’s called a “frontier” rather than a single point. Choosing fitness over a career or family isn’t wrong, it’s just a choice.
Engineers will talk about narrowing down a set of choices only to the set of Pareto optimal outcomes. Cost, durability, stability, and even aesthetics will come into play. With the optimal scenarios in hand, decision makers can then easily evaluate the tradeoffs of one versus the other.
The frontier is not fixed, either. For a widget maker, a technological improvement might shift the mechanics on price and expand the boundaries of the quality/price/time trade off. On an individual level, making small optimizations to time management might not be particularly expensive, but opens up the potential for both family time and exercise.
If we think about our life as a portfolio to tend and balance, it’s easier to see the costs and benefits of our optimistic improvements. Instead of seeking to punch out one corner of the trilemma through brute force abstinence and discipline, consider how to expand the entire boundary.