Saturday, June 29, 2013

Skills Sets and Time Choice Optimality in Arbitrage

While the blogosphere is a bit slow, this is probably a good time to get into more basic aspects of my work in some upcoming posts. How might we think of skills arbitrage differently from - say - the skills we utilize for a job, the way we would pose our skills identity in a resume, or even the skills one might imply from similar groupings in time barter? While most of these are based on valuations derived from societal factors (i.e. exterior valuations), the skills arbitrage sets which we consider under a total or common pool composite, are based on interior valuations which make the best use of our personal time primary, to the greatest extent possible regarding what is "doable" with others (agreed upon by both parties) at any given moment. Again, the fact that we approach our time use from the same starting point makes it not only possible to seek out those who utilize time from similar (multiple) levels of engagement, it also allows us to make better educational choices for time use in an overall sense.

Oftentimes a resume, in that it asks us to list what is relevant regarding our provisions for the workplace, is not so much about us. Rather, it is about what we have actually been able to contribute to the companies or individuals which hired us. In other words, while some of our skills may be reflected in a resume, chances are they could be a limited aspect of our abilities. What's more, those aspects do not necessarily have a practical, primary or even ongoing component in our daily lives. Or, if our paid work is of a more practical nature, there's a good chance that in our off time both our minds and metabolisms will understandably crave the chance to do something completely different. Being able to do so - in turn - further energizes us for the paid work we undertake.

What's more, our skills sets beyond the identity of paid work are not just about hobbies or extra interests, which once were a part of resumes. Skills sets are everything about the ways in we actually approach our lives. Not only do we change skills sets over the years which we routinely tap into, the ones we are the most adept at are not necessarily those which  provide the greatest challenges for us in the present. Some of those more substantial "natural talents" may not even be among the ones we are conscious of, such as the individual who normally manages household finances, for instance. Plus, we do not have to be particularly good at a given skill in order to enjoy it and even to spend time with others engaged in that skill, in some way. We forget sometimes that learning processes don't necessarily "happen" amongst two individuals of noticeably different skill levels, but just as often between people who are approaching similar experiential or validation processes through other aspects of commonalities. Equal time arbitrage matching allows this to happen in recognizable, thus measurable form.

One of the bigger problems with skills barter in particular (besides government interference which shuts barter down, of course) has been the limited terms in which people tend to approach it - that is - mostly as an attempted replica of what people do in the workplace...only without the money attached. This becomes a problem in that what people are really trying to do is gain the better arbitrage for the value they perceive a "job" set as holding in the workplace, instead of the optimality of their own internal time structure as coordinated with that of another. In other words, the arbitrage value for skills barter is perceived as external to the agreed upon setting, whereas skills arbitrage represents not an external optimization in an immediate sense, but an optimization of one's own time use given the most important challenges of the present, as able to gain match potential to others with similar sets of challenges.

For instance, even though music has been a big part of my life, I finally reached a point (ten years ago) when it became apparent that I would need to set aside the time once given to music, for the new sets of challenges in my life which took me in a very different direction. That doesn't necessarily mean I wouldn't teach piano again, (along with music theory) to someone in the present if circumstances permitted. It only means that teaching piano is no longer a practical primary skill set I would reach for in arbitrage settings, unless it was in fact the main skill request by someone who was high on a list of my own time priorities for other reasons.

The reasoning (behind such a decision on my part) matters for anyone who is seeking the best means by which to apportion their time in overall context, and there are multiple facets to the reasoning process. Part of my personal reasoning, for instance, had to do with the actual importance music once held for me, let alone the separate fact that it was no longer able to remain viable in an economic sense. How so?

The way we approach a discipline is very important, given the degree to which it demands our mental faculties and how others expect us to apportion our time for whatever reasons. In that sense, familial or societal "permission" are quite the same (Or, a partner saying "no" to our going back to college is like the workplace which demands at least 40 hours of our time). A most appropriate example in this regard are doctors. As they find their time choice options further decreasing, some are now simply choosing to opt out of the profession altogether. What's important in this regard is the degree of sacrifice a discipline requires, and why in fact the expected sacrifices and requirements actually exist in the first place. For doctors, the basic problem ultimately became an exterior (societal) imposition of time sacrifice, rather than time choice. However, unfortunately, the societal response was also rational, given the self limiting nature of healthcare skills sets from decades, even centuries earlier.

For myself - as regards to the practice of music - there was also an interior time "imposition" which mattered in a very different form: one that existed because of the additional role music also held for me in a creative sense. When we find ourselves compelled to approach life in creative ways, to a degree that is an innate impulse. In other words, such a faculty exists even if we don't particularly like what results from its use! Consequently, we inadvertently end up challenging status quos which we don't particularly want to upset. For me, an early experience in that regard was with a music theory teacher who became frustrated when I wrote songs with minor fifths, even though there was supposedly "no such thing".

What that also meant in a larger sense (for time priority) was that music mattered to me - a lot. The problem in that regard was that if I gave a little time to music, I would often end up wanting to give more time to it, which represented an imposition on what finally became more important responsibilities, as the opportunity costs of remaining in college in the early seventies were a bit higher than the present in wage based terms (long story short...the "you need to be a secretary" lecture). Only when the choice of office work became unsustainable a couple of decades later, did I finally return to music in a serious manner (along with bookselling) and continued until the changes of the 21st century proved too great for many musicians to commit to staying with a band. And my back "gave out" when I tried to move keyboards and equipment around on my own for too long.

In other words, many different kinds of factors come into our choice sets: some of which are because of our own internal circumstance and valuations, and some because of the external circumstances and valuations of those around us. If it is not always possible to think about the differences, to a large degree that has been because of the fact that valuation of our skills sets have been societally externalized for so long. That's the part which will need to change. In the next post I'll explore some more skills options choices also from an educational perspective.

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