How not to be ‘Penny Wise, Time Foolish’
All my life I have been ‘Penny wise, Time foolish.’
I lived under an illusion that time had an infinite supply. I could squander away 24 hours doing random, meaningless, low-impact, low-priority things and voila, I would get another 24. To be candid, I did fine. Nothing felt amiss. No major setbacks or humbling failures. So, it appeared that it didn’t matter whether I paid respect to the time-lord or not.
But here is the thing. When you are thrown in the sea of life, there are broadly two approaches:
a. You choose to swim towards your goal / destination; or
b. You float. You let your environment take care of where you end up. You keep paddling and make tiny adjustments to your pace and direction. But broadly, you stay afloat. I mean you survive. No harm done.
And I believe, that is where lies the difference. If you are in the ‘float’ mode then perhaps you got all the time and status quo is just fine. But. If you are in ‘swim’ mode then time matters. Every dime matters. Lately, I have been making a conscious choice to swim and not float, I have come to greatly appreciate time more than anything else. Resultantly, I have been able to accomplish more in the same 24 hours. I have been able to create more, deliver more, relish more, relax more per 24 hours than before. Lot of things have helped me shape my perspective and belief in the greatness of time. Amazing mentors. People I follow. Newsletters that I receive. Books that I read.
I have been making some tiny adjustments (with modest success) to my life/work style. Some I have been able to practise more and some not as much. But have started. And I am keeping at it. It has helped me to extract more time per day. Some examples:
- Stock markets won’t crash if I don’t have my phone: I try to stay away from my phone as much as I can. I have started to treat it as more of a landline than the mobile. I have been able to cut down on mindless scrolling. Have stopped binge-watching videos on how to take care of your pet snakes. We never had any pets by the way. Not even dog. So, No more tumbling down the rabbit hole. Time saved — 60 minutes/day. Monthly gain -~30 hours.
- Is this meeting really important: Plato famously said ‘Wise Men Speak Because They Have Something To Say; Fools Because They Have To Say Something’. I try everyday not to be a fool. I decline meetings where I believe I have no value to add. In meetings where I need to be present along other speakers, I ask if I can finish early and then log off. Or I speak to the organiser separately and clarify in perhaps 5 minutes. Time saved — 30 minutes/day. Monthly gain — ~10 hours.
- Trivial Competitive Analysis: I want the best deal. If I am ordering food then I want the most discount. I am ordering a cab then I want to pay the least fare. If I am travelling then I want figure out which bank’s credit card would offer the best deal. I am always doing the competitive analysis between multiple apps and then choosing the best value for money. Not the best value for time. Here is what I did. I deleted similar apps in the category except the one I believe have comparatively better UI/UX. Time saved — 15 minutes/day. Monthly gain — ~8 hours.
- Automate the tasks: Moved all bills to standing instructions. All pre-paid to post-paid. Rental payment to SI. Amazon pay to auto top-up. List goes on.
You get the gist. You try to cut down on activities that requires you to invest time but benefit is zilch or trivial. But important aspect is to develop a default mindset where you value time over money and basically everything else. Money value of time and not the time value of money.
Now, the question is what would you do with the time that you save. I have been napping, reading books (managed to read 2 books in this week), struggling with ML course by Andrew Ng (wish I had paid more attention to maths in my grad days), helping kids with their school-work et al (my wife still believes otherwise). And I have a bucket list of things that I still want to do but haven’t managed to prioritise yet. Soon.
I hope you extract more time out of your day than you have spent reading this article. Give me a shout if you have more ideas on extracting more time per day. I have ruled out waking up early. For now, I am not parting with my 8 hours of sleep. Anything else, I am game. Happy reading. May you have all the time in world. And you choose to swim.
