What's Most Important to You?

I try and think about the big picture in life. Often times I view it as a game or a linear program where there's a distinct objective function. Minimize or maximize this objective and you've 'won'.

It's a strange way of thinking of things, but it's been molded by two major factors - my education, namely in operations research, and me playing a lot of games.

In games and linear programs there are rules or constraints that govern what you can and cannot do. At the same time there's (usually) a score which is calculated based on any number of factors.

To achieve the highest score you must determine:
1. What factors are the most important or highly weighted
2. How to maximize those most important factors

The problem with life is that the objective function is not clearly defined. It may differ for each person and even for the same person, change many times. My dream would be to determine what my true objective function is. Knowing exactly what the ultimate goal is would allow me to focus my efforts on activities that would help me reach that goal.

So what's the objective function? I'm not sure. In general people tend to go with 'Be happy'. That's a pretty good objective, although it's rather broad. The concept of happiness is hard to define, but I won't go into that here.

Other people have an objective function that looks like:

max(dollars accumulated)

I'm not saying this is what life should be about, but from a OR standpoint, it's much easier to define. Money is quantifiable, so it's perfectly clear how well you're doing at all times. In the case of gaining money, there are hardly any constraints, provided you don't view laws as binding.

While I can't say for sure what the true objective function of life is, I can define some constraints which I feel are universal. I feel the most important constraint is that one must be healthy. Without health, one cannot enjoy anything or accomplish much of anything. Think about it - even when you have a cold, you're useless. All you want to do is lie around and sleep. I've heard people say they've gotten hangovers so bad that suicide seems like a reasonable option. And these aren't even SERIOUS health problems! I can only imagine what it's like to have far more debilitating conditions such as cancer.

Without your health, nothing else matters. Perhaps a worthy objective function would be to maximize your body's healthiness...