New Year is a convenient time to reflect on the past and plan for the future. Reviewing my older entries
remained me of my more sentimental, idealistic self (for those who’re too lazy to go through the past entries below, this one probably sums up my current views well). Although years have passed, it seems like I haven’t change much. I’m still not satisfied with myself, want to be more true to myself and to live life my way. I want to be able to focus more on the moments in life, treasure simple things in life, and discover what I’m seeking.

 The theme for my New Year plan is Self: to get back to the basics, focus on myself, and to test whether it’s possible to become better through conscious and consistent efforts. From my experience, personality seems rather stable through time and hard to change, but this might be because most people don’t genuinely want to change themselves too much, as it could entail loneliness. Details of my New Year plan will be left for another post.

Back to something lighter, I spent my New Year Eve watching Jay Chou’s movie ‘Secret’. Although I read a few negative reviews, the movie is above my expectation and I like it. Given how hard it’s to film a movie (anyone ever trying to use a video camera to film something nice would understand), the movie’s pretty good as a 1^st attempt by a singer. I can understand now why Angi likes 桂綸鎂 (Kwai Lun Mei) so much. She might also become one of my favourite actresses. I’m looking forward to watch ‘The Most Distant Course’ played by her as well.  成海璃子 (Riko Narumi) is another young Japanese actresses that I think is very talented, which is good as I’ll have more movies to look forward to.

Psychologists found that people tend to get more satisfaction from experiential consumption than materialistic one. So dining out, travel, or going to a movie or concert might provide more lasting satisfaction than buying new clothes or gadgets. I find this sensible and have been shifting more of my consumption toward experience. Just as important is to know one’s own preference, and this is what I set out to do this week: expanding my experience to discover what I find satisfying.

Jazz Bar

Friday night after a quick dinner at nine, I went to a Jazz bar that’s famous for its live jazz. The music was good, and drinking alone in a bar brought the usual ‘feel good’ factor (Was it the ‘I’m special’ aristocratic feel? Or the MV/anime character identification?). But for my preference, the time would be better spend elsewhere, and drinking beer/cocktails don’t give me enough pleasure to counter its adverse effect. For me it’s basically drinking calories without nutrition, so foods and even desserts seem like a much better option.

Pop Concert

On Saturday night, I went to a concert by a Malay singer 梁静茹. This is the first time I go to a pop concert. Interestingly, expectation of the event seemed to be the most exciting part. It’s like going to a field trip for the first time. After coming out of the underground station and not sure how to go to the stadium, I just follow a bunch of red shirts wearing people (the concert theme is Valentine), most also have no idea where the stadium is and just following the crowd. The concert lasted for around 3 hours. Overall I found it a satisfying experience, but maybe a large part of it is because it’s my first time to this type of concert.

Food

Eating is a major Sinaporean pastime (mine as well). My daily meal revolves around quick take-out in food court or hawker center (basically a food court outside the mall without air-con). In a hawker center, one can get authentic local foods at less than 5 S$ (about 2 US$ or 100 baht). Every weekend I’ll venture to a Japanese restaurant (7 different one so far). At this pace, I’ll try most Japanese restaurants in a few months time. But relative to Japanese food, Singapore probably has more good Non-Japan Asian foods that are at better price. Nevertheless, Japanese food tends to be my optimal choice if I were to dine out alone in places other than food court or hawker center. Perhaps I should expand my experience to try more different food as well.

Tim Hartford predicts that “most readers of this column will eat and drink heavily over the next two weeks (as will its writer), and many of us will, on January 1, vow to do better in future.”

If we know what’s going to happen, why don’t we as intelligent being take it into consideration and act on it now. For instance, we could set our resolution during Christmas Eve and starts following-through so we don’t need to regret during the New Year.

This seems like a time-inconsistency problem: ideally we want to do something in the future (be good), but as the future approaches, our optimum decision changes (to be bad). One solution is to bind ourselves to a credible commitment. A few Yale academics built a website to help do it.

But it seems like few people want to make the commitment. So perhaps as Tyler Cowen suggests, most of us actually don’t want to change or feel like losing control. If that’s the case, then we shouldn’t need to feel bad or regret afterward.

Christmas appears to be a big event in Singapore. Lots of tourists came, events abound, and people seem to shop, eat, and drink like crazy. Seeing tons of people on the street make me wonder why people enjoy festivals so much. Perhaps we evolve to enjoy the festivals as winter’s the time of harvest and a good time to build social relationships. If festivals are enjoyable, why don’t we smooth out our consumption to treat everyday more like a Christmas or New Year: more dining out, more gatherings, and show more care to family and friends on a regular basis. Why do we need Christmas or other holidays as an excuse to feel a certain way or do a certain thing? Maybe this one-off pleasure during holidays has increasing returns, or it is an optimal thing to do given other people’s behavior (thinking of herd behavior and game theory). People’s behavior do change during this time: they’ve higher propensity to spend, tend to show more kindness, or feel more gregarious or lonely. So it’s possible that given this circumstance our payoff changes as well.

Since I’m trained as a forward looking agent, here’s what I did on Christmas (sort of doing what I might write on my New Year resolution list later):

1. Went to office to work despite being a holiday.
2. Find a small Japanese Isakaya for dinner
3. Went for a jog and exercise
4. Read books, poems, and whatever materials on my list for self-development
5. Booked a few concert tickets for the coming months
6. Catch up with friends.

It doesn’t appear to me to be an optimal choice and feels very much like any other day. Perhaps it lacks that special something that economics can’t provide. Instead of going out to party, I’m staying at home to analyze Christmas. I guess my miserable personality, not economics, is to be blame.

It’s half way through my internship, and I’ve gained around 2kg of weight. Perhaps I should start another diet challenge (see here and here). The weight gain is both due to less exercise (I only go to gym during weekend now) and more importantly, the increased consumption of chocolates and sweets. Our division has a policy that anyone coming back from travel should bring back sweets. I never figure out who set the rule, but I guess it’s our manager as he is a sweets junkie. Since summer’s the travelling season, almost every week there’ll be new chocolates proliferating around the division. German chocolates, Swiss, Spanish, Irish, Austrian, you name it.

As a rule, I generally don’t buy junk foods or sweets myself, but I’d eat them if they are available, especially if they are sweets I never had before as I derive pleasure from trying new foods. The problem now is that even if I just try one of every type of chocolates around, the amount still seems excessive.

What should I do? I view this as a kind of time inconsistency problem economists study. I can think of a few solutions for it. One way is to eliminate the problem altogether (e.g. have someone take the chocolates away so I don’t face the temptation and won’t face the problem anymore). But this is not feasible in this case as the chocolates are communal. Another solution is changing my preference (e.g. making myself hate chocolates either by deception or by reading more about its bad effects). But why would I want to deceive myself? And I know enough about the nutrition values of chocolates and still find the pleasure from moderate consumption (especially novel ones) outweigh the costs. The last solution that come to my mind is by setting rule for myself (I won’t consume any sweets, or I’ll only have one chocolate per day, etc.). I find this method useful as I generally have the will power to follow through rules I set for myself. But it seems a bit rigid and takes out the spontaneous pleasure of consuming whenever one wishes. I’m wondering whether there are other ways I could achieve the same outcome without having to follow a rigid rule.

Any ideas?

As mentioned in my previous entry, I’m considering what to do after internship. As people options expand, making a career decision becomes more difficult as well. And it’s increasingly the case that people don’t have to do things they hate to earn a basic living. This means there’re many ways to live life.

My struggle with which options to choose arises from not being sure about the weight of my values. PhD’s definitely not a sure ticket to success (it depends on how you define success as well). But if autonomy, intellectual pursuit, and interaction with liked-minded people are what I value in life, then doing a PhD might be a good option. The trade-off is likely to be lower income for the amount of time I work. Being a wandering artist also trade offs money for certain kind of experiences. It’s a more extreme trade-off, and I don’t think I’ve the courage to pursuit this option (not till I got a clearer view of my values). And I also want to repay my student loans first.

The major dimensions to career satisfaction seem to be interests, personality fit, and rewards (pay, prestige, etc.). But perhaps personal dispositions are equally important. There’re people who tend to be happier and more satisfied with whatever they do. And there’re people like me who find it harder to get satisfied. I tend to have various ideal pictures in mind and try to move my life closer to them. I think both groups suffer some sorts of illusions. The first type could credibly deceive themselves in the present, while the second type deceives themselves in some ideal futures that are likely to be less beautiful.

Some people live their life through trials-and-errors. Others prefer a more planned approach. The two approaches are likely to lead to different outcomes, but if you don’t know what you want to do in life, I don’t think they make much difference. For those people who tend to worry about career choice like I do, here’re my thoughts:

Your career choices do not determine your life. You can always change if you want. It might be costly, it might take longer to reach where you want, or you might never reach it and will have to find the best compromise. But what’s more important should be to enjoy the process and to direct your life toward where you want to go.

PS: Thanks for all the comments from friends (further comments are welcome of course). I’m still not sure what I want to do, but as I continue to experience more things and lessen my financial constraints along the way, hopefully my values will become clearer.

Related Articles:

Money and Status: It’s really up to you (which referred to an earlier entry: Relatively Awesome)

How To Do What you Love

1. Graduated with Distinction

2. Interning at Goldman Sachs and enjoying the experience

3. More readings, movies, orchestra, and foods—it’s good to have income

4. Still deciding what I’d like to do. Potential options:

a.   Work in investment bank

b.   Work in strategic consultancy

c.     Work in economic consultancy

d.     Do a PhD

e.      Become a wandering artist  

Which would you recommend? I’d love to hear friends’ comments