In the field of environmental economics, there is a concept called “double dividends”. Imagine that the government, to protect the environment, is looking to reduce some polluting activity (e.g. carbon emissions or whatever) through a tax. The point of the tax is to reduce the polluting activity, but the secondary effect of the tax is that the government now has an extra pile of money - they could choose to spend that money on further environmental benefits. If the government does so, this generates “double dividends” - 1) the first benefit is the reduction in the polluting activity due to the tax, and 2) the second benefit is the additional environmental improvements by whatever environmental programme the government chooses to spend the money on.

Double dividends also work in one’s personal life. For example:

  • In one episode from Greg Mckeown’s podcast, he and a guest discuss the example of 1) cutting down on non-essential monthly subscriptions to save money, then 2) investing that money in an index fund so it grows over time.
  • Recently, I’ve had great success with 1) batching my emails so that I only check them once per day, at a specific time of day. This has given me 2) extra mental space to focus on wellbeing and other life improvements.