Savoring Life Versus Achieving

It makes intuitive sense to us that those who value achievement over savoring the fruits of life will be more successful in finding ways to work harder and smarter to become more prosperous. Of course achievement means different things to different people. When I talk about a society that values achievement I imagine one where its people prioritize professional success, creating thriving businesses and building economic security versus other goals like protecting the environment or enjoying leisure. What's more, these societies tend to be ones where there is a faith that competition is fair and hard work will be rewarded (otherwise it's less likely for the people to be motivated).

对于我们来说，直观地认识到，为了追求生活果实而重视成就的人将更加成功地找到更加努力，更智能地变得更加繁荣的方法。当然，成就意味着不同的东西给不同的人。当我谈论一个重视成就的社会时，我想象一个人们优先考虑专业成就，创造蓬勃发展的企业，建立经济安全与其他目标，如保护环境或休闲。更重要的是，这些社会往往是有信念的，那就是竞争是公平的，努力的工作会得到回报（否则，人们不太可能有动力）。

To calculate our "savoring life versus achieving" gauge we put 50% weight on the measures of whether the culture values working hard and 50% on the values expressed in an international values survey. For the first component (the evidence we see of work ethic in things like hours worked or vacation days), we draw on the broad measure of working hard that we discussed as part of self-sufficiency. For the latter component, the expressed values of society, survey data is difficult to compare across countries, so we triangulated with several different questions that were consistent with our goal of capturing the desire of people to savor what they have or focus on achieving more. For example, we used answers to questions like, "what should the first priority be for the future of the country," or "economic growth is more important than the environment," to get at how people value further success or economic growth in relation to other values (like the environment, people having more say in their communities, etc.). We also look at questions about whether having a good time is important relative to accomplishing and whether the respondent thinks it's important to be successful, which are somewhat more direct. Lastly, questions like "competition is harmful" help us get a sense of people's attitudes toward the type of environment that encourages people to push to achieve. These were combined into our overall indicator of the relative preference for savoring life versus achieving in a way that is indicated by the weights shown below. As with self-sufficiency, there is a natural tendency for people in less developed countries to value becoming more prosperous through hard work and achievement, compared to developed countries which are more inclined towards leisure. Once we take into account the level of a country's income, our indicator of savoring life versus achieving is about 40% correlated to growth.

为了计算我们的“品尝生活与实现”的衡量标准，我们将50％的重量放在衡量文化价值观努力和50％在国际价值观调查中表达的价值观的措施上。对于第一个组成部分（我们在工作时间或假期等事情中看到的工作伦理的证据），我们借鉴我们作为自给自足的一部分讨论的广泛的努力。对于后一个组成部分，社会的表达价值观，调查数据难以在各国进行比较，因此我们用几个不同的问题进行了三角测量，这些问题与我们的目标是一致的，即我们的目标是捕捉人们对自己所拥有的或侧重于实现更多目标的渴望。例如，我们对诸如“国家未来的首要任务”或“经济增长比环境更重要”等问题进行了回答，以了解人们如何看待更多的成功或经济增长到其他价值观（如环境，社区人士等等）。我们还会看看关于是否有好的时间对于完成而言是重要的问题，以及被访者认为成功至关重要，哪些更直接。最后，像“竞争有害”这样的问题有助于我们了解人们对鼓励人们推动实现的环境类型的态度。这些被归结为我们对于品味生活的相对偏好与实现的总体指标，其方式以下面所示的权重表示。与自给自足一样，与发展中国家比较倾向于休闲的发达国家相比，欠发达国家的人们倾向于通过艰苦的工作和成就来重视更加繁荣的趋势。一旦我们考虑到一个国家的收入水平，我们的生活与实现的指标与增长大致相差40％。

When we look at the picture of which countries prioritize achievement over savoring, we see the familiar countries at the top and bottom—East Asia and the European periphery, respectively. India and Mexico score as being most focused on achieving. The most achievement-oriented countries in the developed world are the US and Japan by these measures. European countries focus more on savoring life than most countries in the world, with France and Italy at the bottom. The positions change some once we take into account the effect of income, though not all that much (the differences between the extremes are also smaller). Singapore moves up to the top spot—when you take into account how wealthy the country is, it’s remarkable how hard-working and achievement-oriented its people appear by our measures. India still ranks toward the top after taking into account its income level, but its relative achievement orientation stands out as less exceptional.

当我们看看哪些国家优先考虑成就时，我们看到熟悉的国家分别位于东亚和东亚以及欧洲周边地区。印度和墨西哥的评分最为专注于实现。发达国家最成功的国家是美国和日本。欧洲国家更多地关注世界上大多数国家的品味生活，法国和意大利在底层。一旦我们考虑到收入的影响，即使不是那么多（极端之间的差异也较小），这些头寸会改变一些。新加坡移动到最高点 - 当你考虑到这个国家有多富裕的时候，我们采取措施使人们以努力工作和以成就为导向的人才是显而易见的。考虑到印度的收入水平，印度依然处于顶峰，但其相对成就取向突出表现较少。