How do we know when we’ve been economically successful?

Some kind of shared sense of success in an economy is useful to create cohesive workplaces, organisations, and sectors. The same way that a sports team or a band can’t work without a shared goal, economic cooperation is difficult when people are working towards different outcomes. Because our economic lives are so interconnected, we often rely at least to some extent on each other to achieve our own successes, and that means having a mutual idea of what that success looks like.

If our countries and governments allow it, we often just work this out for ourselves, flocking to the region where people’s values and goals align with ours and setting up there. We’ll move neighborhoods, cities, countries, even continents to find an economy whose idea of work, leisure, time, and value aligns with our own, and lets us achieve what we we’re striving towards.

If, for legal, financial, or personal constraints, we’re forced to stay in an economy that doesn’t suit our values, many end up feeling like they’ve let themselves and those around them down when they don’t measure up to the idea of success that those around them hold. A word that gets used a lot as a measure of success is productivity. But what does a productive life actually mean - one with a large amount of material output, a wide social network, an innovative legacy?