How to choose a good Christmas gift
An equation to estimate the cost-effectiveness of any gift.
Christmas is now about one week behind us, but I'm still thinking about gift-giving. I, unfortunately, am not a good gift-giver. I frequently procrastinate until the last possible minute to find a gift for someone's birthday or for Christmas.
I'm trying to use one principle to improve my gift giving. Behold the cost-effective gift equation:
GCE = S*T/P
where
- S = satisfaction of recipient
- T = time recipient will meaningfully use gift
- P = price of gift
The idea is to maximize GCE (gift cost-effectiveness). I'm aware that this equation is very rudimentary. It doesn't take into account how thoughtful a gift was. It's also difficult to estimate numbers for the satisfaction and time variables, as those variables are determined by the recipient.
But I think the cost-effective gift equation is good as a rough heuristic. You don't want to buy an expensive gift that will bring little satisfaction to its recipient—and the equation reflects that.
I frequently gift a high-quality, well-designed deck of cards from Theory11[1] as an easy gift. Most people appreciate having a really nice deck of cards. (Everybody uses a deck of cards at least once in a while.)
Not sponsored. Just like their cards. ↩︎