Back to the Drawing Board

There’s a little experiment that I have been conducting for the past two months. So far, the results prove inconclusive yet point in the direction that I had not expected it to. The dismal results have so far discouraged me from continuing testing and call the whole thing off. However, as is the nature of experiments, one has to see it through to be able to draw a conclusion, one that is necessary to be able to make any use of the data that you have gathered.

So what is this experiment called? It’s called can I live without a second job or more aptly, “Mo’ money, mo’ problems”. My theory was that as my production increased, so does the expense, thus making earning more money to save more a bit moot. My thesis was that as production decreased, so does expense which would therefore permit me to decrease expenses by decreasing profits. My expectations were that I could arrive at a point wherein net gain would be at a maximum by slowly decreasing production which is not directly proportional to expense, making the whole experiment quite logical.

As you may have guessed, the rate of decrease in productivity was much higher in magnitude that the rate of decrease in expenditure. Illustrated by my current situation, maximum net gain could only be achieved by allowing the rate of decrease of expenditure to have a higher magnitude than that of productivity.

So what does this prove? Nothing so far. I have come to realize that the whole set-up was flawed from the beginning. There was no control, the environment was too unstable thanks to outside factors affecting the gain from the primary job, as well as a lack of a quantifiable progression. I’m probably the dumbest social scientist alive.

To arrest the uncontrollable downward spiral that I seem to be stuck in at the moment, I have decided to ensure that the whole system is properly logged and in place, establish a control, chart the progress of the experiment, and approach it from the opposite end, meaning increasing production rather than decreasing it. I’ll admit that this is less fun and more stressful, but to be able to salvage anything from it I would need to compromise. This would take a lot of time to be able to get up and running.

Oh well, the phrase “back to the drawing board” has just slapped me silly.