The Hygiene Factors
Let me start the story with a common analogy for Sri Lankan youth. When we were reading for our Advanced level at school, people come up with all sorts of advice on what tuition class we should select. Depending on the teacher, the class location and the class size. If you take the size, I have met people who are against very large classes because you won’t get the attention that you require and you will also be lost in the crowd. Then I have met people who are against individual classes or classes with 2–3 students because then you can’t compare with the majority and the phase of the class might go off and all the reasons. We all know that all the arguments in both cases are very valid. But have you ever seen someone complain about a group class with a moderate number of students? Not about the teacher but about the class size? [NOTE — I left the exact number for a “moderate size class on purpose]
Let me give you another example. We all heard people say that “money is the root of all evil” and according to Robert Kiyosaki the famous author of the book “Rich dad poor dad”, statements like that are what holding us back. According to some, in terms of money, it’s more the merrier. Some say, if you give up the taste of money and let it go you will have peace. Which is true. On the other hand, some say, if you become more and more ambitious and work hard to earn more again you will be happy which is also true. For me personally, these kinds of contradictions bother me a lot.
The main reason why we can’t figure out these contradictions is that the success stories we hear support both the extreme end of the spectrum. We hear billionaires talk about ambition and working hard to earn and keeping ourselves always hungry for more. Well if they became billionaires like that, it must be true right? But then we see people who gave up on all of that and decided to lead a simple life who are really happy and enjoy themselves equally as the billionaires. And then there is us who has no enough cash nor inner peace. Explaining the philosophy behind this is a tough thing to do. Mainly because I don’t understand it enough to put it words. But let me explain this from a technical perspective by taking our monthly income as an example.
We live in a society where the monthly income spectrum is massive. We have families who survive a month with the same amount of money that someone else makes in a day. Yet, the level of complaining about the amount they make never ends. Irrespective of what you earn you still believe you can have a better life by earning more. This is mainly why we say salary is a “hygiene factor”. Just like personal hygiene, the more you have, the better but you can never have enough. So one would say that happiness is not directly proportional to income. But there is a different co-relation. If you think about it, there is another reason why we call it a hygiene factor. Yes, no matter how much we have we would always want more and there is no end to it. But just as personal hygiene there is a bottom line to this. A minimum level of standard that would require us to survive. With that let me introduce the inverted U curve,
Malcolm Gladwell in his book “David and Goliath” describes this to explain how easy parenting would be proportional to the amount of money parents have. Initially, there are two theories.
- The amount of money is directly proportional to the quality of raising a child.
- enables more resources for the child. Like best education best health care and best practices making it is easy to raise a child.
- The amount of money does not have any effect at all.
- is the other extreme where the physical values do not matter it’s all about the values the parents share.
Deep down inside, we all know that both of these arguments are true to some extent. But the 3rd argument explains this the best.
From numerous research and studies conducted, it is explained that the co-relation of earning capacity and parenting quality acts as an inverted U curve.
This explains a lot!
According to the studies, there is a certain threshold. Up until that, the more money you have will help you raise your kids better. This is by giving better education and resources and keeping the child satisfied. But then when you cross a certain threshold, after that, the amount of money you make does not reflect the quality. Infect it diminishes the quality. This is because of the higher value given on materialistic things over values and the kid being spoiled and such.
Note that the $75,000 values are according to the standards of the US where they did the research. This value differs due to a lot of different factors. But the point where we have to pay attention is not the number. The idea behind it.
I am sure that no one would be motivated to reduce the income if they are earning more just to stay happy. Therefore, what you need to understand is that there is a co-relation among these things but most of the time we cannot control it. What we could do instead is act accordingly.
These theories are built on big data and these are just patterns. This is not the universal truth like the theory of relativity. If you understand the idea and figure out where you fall in the spectrum and act accordingly, it will all be good. There are very rich parents who raise their kids the best and vice versa. There are students who only went to massive tuition classes and ranked among the best and vice versa.
So where do you fall in the spectrums that bug you in your life right now?
