Is Time On Your Side?

What is the one thing that we are all given equal amounts of every day, and once it is gone you can never get back?

Time.

When you have an abundance of something, you tend to value it less. Think of incredibly wealthy people, the value most of them would place on a $50 bill would be a lot less than a young couple who have just purchased their first home after years of saving.

Scarcity creates value. We all covert stuff that is less common. Look at how much top end designers can charge for a piece of cotton that has been dyed and stitched together by some child in Bangladesh.

Yet just because something is not scarce, does not mean it has less value.

How we choose to spend each day’s allocation of time are the most important decisions we make. These decisions determine our life trajectory - our relationships, our health, our happiness, our wealth, our expertise, and our knowledge.

Yet, how hard do we think about these decisions each day? We tend to be consumed in the operational aspects of our lives, churning through never ending to-do lists. We may occasionally come up for a breath, have a look around, acknowledge that you are not quite heading in the direction you would like, but then the to-do list calls and you put those thoughts into the tomorrow basket.

And when we do get a break, that much of that time is gobbled up by scrolling through social media feeds or taking in the latest must-see series on Netflix. There are a lot of people competing for our attention and they have gotten very proficient at capturing it through their understanding of our irrational, yet predictable behaviour.

You look at some people with admiration into what they have packed into their lives. You may consider them clever, or highly motivated, or lucky. But the reality we tend to ignore is they have the exact same amount of time each day to allocate activities to as the rest of us.

You can never get back time. People usually regret the things they didn’t do (unless it is crashing Dad’s car because you thought you were Possum Borne but actually couldn’t drive for shit). We tend to forget the bad decisions, and lament the decisions that we didn’t make.

Those little daily decisions as to how we allocate the precious gift of time are the most important calls we make. And the nice thing about time, if we stuff it up today, we can have another crack tomorrow.

Time is precious. Use it wisely.