Yesterday’s post—about how training a team can feel costly, but it doesn’t compare to the cost of not training them—got me thinking about how easy it is to confuse tangible and intangible value.
Take standard of living and quality of life, for example.
At first glance, they look and feel similar. But when we dig a little deeper, their differences are stark.
Standard of living is a monetary measure. In general, as income increases, so does the standard of living. It’s tangible.
However, quality of life is different.
We can’t put a price on our relationships. We can’t estimate how acting with integrity allows us to have a peaceful night’s sleep. We can’t quantify, at least precisely, how having a calm mind and a fit body impacts all other parts of our lives.
It’s a theme I’ve been pondering a lot recently: not everything of value can be measured, and just because it’s intangible, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be optimising for it.