never-ending work .

Both in microeconomics last semester and macroeconomics this semester, we touch on human behavior in terms of employment and why people make various business decisions. This stuff is extremely interesting to me, because it's sort of things that you would never normally think about. It's in the same realm as analysing body language; the stuff is just interesting and really different stuff. Last semester we discussed how paying people more money only makes them work harder up until a certain point. Allow me to explain.

If you don't think you get paid enough, or you need to make more money to support your family and yourself, you will be willing to work quite hard. Most people, in this situation are willing to do anything to make ends meet -- take on a second job, hunt for coupons, search for deals, make personal sacrifices of time and money.

So let's say you get a better paying job, or a promotion. And you keep getting promotions. And you work harder and harder, assuming that you'll keep getting paid more.

Eventually, you'll get to the point where you are comfortably paid. You make enough to live on, spend on yourself occasionally, and do more or less what you want to do. And here's where you stop working hard. You have achieved what you want, and now that you have some extra money, you want to have time to be able to spend it. You take more days off, you do more leisure activities, you take more vacations because you finally can. I thought this was really interesting. It proves that motivation truly can plateau, at least in the financial way.

And this leads me to the idea of never-ending work. Will the work ever end? What if your leisure time continues to slip away and you never get to embrace the well-deserved time off? It's an interesting thing trying to balance leisure time and work time. I feel like so far in this semester, I've really had to squeeze in my "fun" time, while always working around a hefty work schedule. Heck, even my blogging has severely suffered from that. But it's something that I want to make a priority, and to begin again to keep up daily. It certainly is an adjustment from the relatively lazy state of summer.

So whether you are my age or have many years on me, perhaps this is a good reminder to take a break for yourself every once in awhile. Everyone deserves it and it's a much needed part of life.