Life GPA

They taught you to make number go up. They said that obedient kids get good grades, that productive people get paid, that the wealthy are powerful and free and attractive and happy.

But life doesn't always provide obvious numbers. You had GPA but graduated. You had ELO but got a job. You had KPIs but took vacation. You had matches but got married. You had salary but got laid off. You had citations but created a human. You had BMI but got diagnosed. You had numbers but you changed.

They baked "number go up" into your traditions, beliefs, cultural norms, media, milieu, etc. They programmed you to make number go up, and it's difficult/dangerous to edit that stubborn firmware. People who venture beyond their prescribed structures (e.g. school, work) often feel anxious and worthless.

So maybe you need a number to strive, to thrive, to win. That's okay. You may need that number to synthesize structure for what to do, how to live, who to become.

LGPA is a number. When you are aimless and/or despondent, you can make this number go up. It won't guarantee happiness, but it can incentivize some of its correlates:

LGPA =
  ln(♡) * log10($) * log[3/2](☺)
    + sum(lgpa(child[i]) / 4)

♡ = volunteer hours
$ = net worth
☺ = fitness percentile

Some non-obvious beliefs are encoded into LGPA:

• Balanced: The LGPA formula punishes min-maxing, i.e. LGPA is zero if fitness or wealth or volunteering are zero.
• Curved: In this formula, each variable adds diminishing returns, e.g. growing $10K into $100K is as valuable as $10M into $100M.
• Sharable: Couples/families can use shared LGPA to strategize specialized roles, e.g. LGPA(Alice+Bob) ≥ LGPA(Alice)+LGPA(Bob).
• Domestic: Many definitions of "success" are blind to domestic labor. Good parents should feel like valuable contributors to society.
• Independent: Parents shouldn't fulfill dreams/goals through children. In this formula, parents are incentivized to pursue personal growth.
• Responsible: Your life is not fungible. Spending money on charity cannot be exchanged for spending time on charity.
• Accomodating: The definitions of "fitness" and "volunteering" are purposefully vague enough to accomodate many worldviews/beliefs. Two reasonable respective starting-points: age-adjusted VO2-Max percentile and unprofitable hours spent on strangers.
• Economic: This formula assumes that most dollars are earned via positive-sum interactions. If true, net worth is a crude measure for the amount of value one has created for other people. "Cumulative non-inherited net worth" might be a more appropriate variable for LGPA.

They taught you to make number go up -- don't play by their rules. You needn't feed your organs into a vending machine. You can pursue your own number; you can use that number to synthesize structure.

One day, you might build your stable structure far from those institutions. Revel in your success -- your health, your abundance, your compassion. With enough distance, you'll forget you ever wanted to be a number.