my earliest memory of such was a friend who left her investment banking job to teach at her secondary school. while ivy's teaching job paid her about 10% of what she was making, she had tripled her free time, derived three times as much joy from her work (approximately really - since you can't really multiply negative numbers), so she was convinced she actually had gotten a incredible deal.
of course, it's actually really difficult in practice to say doing this makes me twice as happy as doing that. or is it? can we assign "relative values" to things we enjoy? or variety is the essential element hence so even hanging out at a luxurious beach resort will get really boring after a while?
how about, thinking about how much time we spend doing things on a day-to-day basis that really matter to us? that matter to the world? and how do these things change with the time test, i.e. from a one year perspective, five year, ten year, thirty year perspective?
should the quality of life be defined by how much enjoyment i derive, or how much enjoyment other people derive?
