Utils Baby

HELLO AGAIN! 

Update: On Tuesday, I started my Human Resources internship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston! Working in Boston is so fun and I love my managers/supervisors. I have already learned so much and I am so excited to learn more as the summer continues! 

Okay...enough of that, who's ready for some Economic logic about happiness? I know, I know, I had to take the risk of sounding like a nerd because I needed you to know that there is more to this post than just boring economics stuff (sorry econ majors). As you all probably know, I am all about positivity, happiness and the ways in which we can achieve a life of PQTH. Sometimes this concept seems arbitrary and is difficult for people to grasp because it is such an imaginary and subjective thing. Putting real life logic into words on how to achieve happiness can sometimes help the comprehension process.

I apologize in advance if I use business jargon that some people may not understand, I am going to try my best to break it down in every day terminology so that everyone can implement it into their lives. I'm sure all of you have heard the saying "Less is More". Often, parents use this saying to politely tell their sons to not wear as much cologne, daughters to not wear as much makeup and to each other to skip the sappy anniversary gifts (flowers are better than a card board cut out of each other). As funny as this may seem they are trying to help you and the others around you be happy. Here is the economic logic you are all using that you may not know, diminishing marginal utility, I know sounds pretty intelligent, toss that one out at a party sometime ;)

To understand diminishing marginal utility you'll need to know a little bit about what utils are. Not going to lie, util is probably one of my favorite business terms because not only does it talk about happiness and how to measure it but it's a fun word to say. HAHA okay sorry for the little side note, back to the nerdy stuff. In microeconomics, happiness is measured by a concept called utility. The standard unit of measurement that microeconomics uses to measure utility is called the util. This term is used in regards to consumption. To make things really simple, it's basically a way to rate how happy things make you. For example, if I like the ice cream more than the cake I would assign ice cream 20 utils and cake 10 utils. Simple, right?

So, we assume that every bowl of ice cream we eat we get a little happier. However, when we eat more and more ice cream we get more full and start to feel yucky, eventually causing us to be less happy. This is the concept of diminishing marginal utility. The fancy dictionary definition is "The law of diminishing marginal utility is a law of economics stating that as a person increases consumption of a product while keeping consumption of other products constant, there is a decline in the marginal utility that person derives from consuming each additional unit of that product." Simply, if you keep everything else in your life steady but do more of one thing there will be a point when the additional consumption of the good will make you less happy.

You might be asking yourself, how does this relate to me? Why is she writing about this? I ain't no economics major, I really don't care! Well, there is obviously a reason you're reading this article and I might assume it's because you're looking to increase happiness in your own life. So, I'll ask you to keep reading, I'll get there I promise.

I will be the first to admit, I can be negative and take my happiness for granted. I'm working on it. But in life we often get caught up in complaining and venting our feelings to friends and family members. In the beginning we feel happy and every little thing we vent feels better and better and we get relief from getting out the negativity. However, after a while we start to feel less relief and negativity consumes our life. This is the same logic as diminishing marginal utility and we learn negativity immensely affects our happiness.

Of course there are times we need to complain and vent, we shouldn't bottle up our feelings. But knowing appropriate times to vent and potentially put others in a bad mood and knowing when to stop and take a breath is important. Too easily, we, as a society, get caught up in gossip, judgement and negativity. My challenge for you is quite simple...it is as follows.

Challenge: Find an outlet for getting your negative feelings out without complaining. Is it working out? Reading a book? Writing? Going for a car ride?

PQTH,

HAN