Dr. Corinne Low

And the same with even thinking about career advancement and saying, like, am I going to lean into this new opportunity or am I going to pursue this opportunity that might be fulfilling to me?

And it's like, well, is it going to be more fulfilling than knowing that I spent this scarce time with my parents when they really needed it, right?

And so just if we understand that our goal in life is to maximize our utility function, to go back to the kind of econ 101, right?

Our goal in life is not to maximize career success.

It's our utility function.

It's the sum total of our joy, fulfillment, and contentment over our lifetimes that when we are in the position that our parents are in, so when we're 80 years old and sitting in a rocking chair and looking backwards and saying, was that a life well lived?

Did I invest my time where I wanted to invest my time, right?

So it's saying I don't want to end my life with regrets.

And sometimes the things that we've been encouraged to do are meaningful kind of on paper to us right now, but when we take that long view, we're like, you know what?

I'm not going to care whether I got the promotion.

I'm going to care whether I was able to spend time where it mattered, when it mattered, because I can't get this time back.

So I would say there's a little bit of that like quiet quitting that I'm advocating for, which is not leaving your job because money is really important, right?

Like money helps us in a lot of ways too.

And we like we need money.

But it's how do you make sure that you get what you need out of your job and you're not just trying to kind of put time in because you've been programmed to say that like, well, success means being successful at work.

Yeah.

Well, I think it's – we should think about all these things as creating economic value, right?

And so when you are taking care of your mom, you're producing economic value in two ways.

One is that you're helping her have higher utility because you're helping her have a life that works better for her, right?

And you're producing economic value for yourself because you get meaning.