Treating Time As an Asset

I was talking with my friend Al – who is recently a new father – about the passage of time and how we might think about it.

After some back and forth, we settled in on approaching it as a financial transaction (how stereotypical for a couple of finance guys).

Everyone talks about time as the most precious resource, and they’re right. We can spend it, we can invest it, and we can waste it.

What often gets left out is that there are productive ways to waste time and unproductive ways to spend it too.

For all of the complexity that life offers. It’s this nuance – that busy can still be wasteful, and lazy can still be time well spent that trips most people up.

The compass is personal satisfaction.

How hard is it to stop and ask if we’re having a good time, and if not, if that not-goodness is worth the investment?

Not too hard.

Just easy to forget.

It’s also easy to get lost on one or two negative details in the face of a million other good ones (and even miracles).

So something went wrong at the office – if you have a baby at home, a family, a paycheck, a house, an office to come to – things maybe aren’t so bad. Don’t spend the added time on the worry, or at least beyond the minimum necessary.

Know when to be a cheapskate and when to invest.

Time is precious, account for it as such.

And while you’ve got it, you might as well spend it.