OK, I saw this ‘philosophy’ in a profile of a couchsurfing host that I didn’t stay with, and now that I can’t remember its name, I can’t find his account either. So I’m posting here to ask.
The theory is like this. In life we can roughly divide all conscious human activities into 1) pleasure and 2) work/contribute. Aside from the few who manage to find their intersection, let’s assume that these 2 categories are mutual exclusive. Now, we could work all our days and suddenly one day we could die without knowing anything about pleasure (traveling, etc). But if we don’t contribute then our life is pretty meaningless. So the theory proposes to distribute these pleasure/work time wisely. I remember that he mentioned some mathematical formulae that help calculate whether we should work how many % at 40, 50, 70, etc. IIRC, the result was that we should work more when young, but not neglect this particular % time (days in a year) best dedicated to pleasure… As we get older than the risk of dying each year climb higher, we should allocate this more % on pleasure, and so on. I was fascinated with the theory and thought it makes lots of sense.
There is a definitely something to be said for not being the richest man in the graveyard and also that no-one ever lay on their deathbed wishing they’d spent more time in the office.
But in order to have the means to enjoy your life also requires some form of paid-for work and also we have to be aware that the most free time in our lives tend to come at a point where we may be physically least able to exploit it. Good luck to any individual who manages to balance all those competing factors, I don’t believe there is an equation that will solve that problem.
It sounds like a particular interpretation of Epicureanism, or rather attempt at achieving its goals. Might that be the word you’re looking for?
Alternatively, the word you’re looking for might be hedonism, but I think this focusses more on the immediate achievement of pleasure and doesn’t have that long-term view you describe.
It seems a good candidate at first, but I think it doesn’t quite match the idea of dividing activities into pleasure and work/contribution, or the idea of allocating one’s time to those two categories differently in youth and in old age:
While I kinda agree that the equations are results of mathematicians trying (a bit too) hard to solve life problems, they do bring up nice formulae that generalize the strategy so each of us can take as a framework. Example: the secretary problem.
That guy sure writes a lot. The constant self-ad and the paywall turned me off, though.
Yeah, the ‘theory’ I mentioned pays attention to death and sees it as an important determinant in our decision.
I concur. Epicureanism sounds fascinating to me, but within this topic: it doesn’t take into account the work/contr faction and strategy. It’s like a big way of life that sometimes deal with case-by-case tactics.