Value-dense life

I liked Diana Hsieh's notion of value-dense buying.  But it occurred to me, the same principle should apply to all aspects of one's life.  Everything we do should be value-dense (not just spending).

"Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is limited by the duration of one’s lifespan, it is a part of one’s life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from it." ~ Ayn Rand, IOEP, p. 44

Every action we choose requires time - time that could be spent doing another activity.  So its to our best interest to spend each second on activities that create the most value to us, i.e. are value-dense. For example, I've met many wonderful women throughout my life.  Yet only one packed such an incredible dense value system that was consistent with my own, that I decided to marry her.  Besides a shared appreciation of Ayn Rand, our founding fathers, and many extraordinary inventors and industrialists, we love hiking, camping, board games, sci-fi, reading, discussing politics/philosophy/economics/technology/education, and on and on. As a couple, we strive to find activities that we both find fulfilling.  The more values that each of us can share together, the more value-dense the relationship. And the longer I'm in the relationship, the more value-dense the relationship becomes.  We find ever new ways to connect and grow that makes the marriage ever more satisfying and enriching.

The same applies to friends.  I choose friends that bring me the most values packed into one person.  I meet thousands of individuals, many of whom I could develop friendships if I put forth the effort.  But I reserve any effort at a friendship to those individuals that bring me the most joy.  And guess what, those individuals are value-dense, at least for me.  I do not have lots of friends in part because I choose not too.  I would rather have few friends that are value-dense than lots of friends that are value-sparse.  (In this context, value-dense and value-sparse refer to the values I gain from the relationship, not to any notion of intrinsic value the friends may have.)

Besides people, careers can be value-dense.  After discovering my central purpose in life, I pursued a career that was value-dense.  I love technology, business, teaching, and even philosophy.  As such, my current career as a professor of information systems is value-dense.  I gain values from every minute working in this career.  I could have picked a career as a philosophy professor or an IT professional or high school teacher.  Each of which would have added some values.  But none are as dense in values as my current choice.  Perhaps that's why I love my job so much.

Food should also be value-dense.  One of the things that attracts me to the paleo-diet (even if I'm not fully following it) is the notion that we should eat food that brings us the most value pound for pound.  Why eat things that contain little to no nutritional value?  Calories certainly give us some energy, but vitamins and minerals are such an integral part of nutritional health, that we should be eating far more of it than we currently do.

It makes sense to apply that same principle to pursuing all values as densely as possible, including buying things.  As a financial principle, we should spend money on things that are value-dense - things that pack the most value into the budget we have.  This doesn't mean we should be frugal.  Rather, we should identify those things that will bring the most value and then pursue them with a passion.  Suppose you love to travel.  There are certainly expensive ways and cheap ways to travel.  Properly identifying the value you gain from traveling will help you make the optional value choices as to where to spend money when you travel.  Do you enjoy the pampering you get a hotels?  Then by all means, spend money on a nice hotel.  Do you enjoy learning the local culture?  Then maybe skimping on the hotel is justified and splurging on local events may suite you best.  Decisions on spending should be based on achieving maximal value and should be pursued with full consciousness and awareness of opportunities passed up for the choices made.

Combined, all of these examples suggest a value-dense approach to life is ideal and achievable.