Which matters more: Time or money?
Many of us would go with the first option. But we have a strange way of showing it.
In reality, we tend to put our bank accounts first. We know that money is a finite resource and live within our means.
Yet, we fail to treat time with the same care.
We overload our schedules, meet our obligations with haste and act as if there’s no tomorrow.
All to earn more money, more accomplishments or more prestige.
It’s as if we consider time to be a maximizable asset. Something that can provide us an outstanding return on our investment if we play our cards right.
After all, we can’t pay for a burger with time. Or buy our dream house with it. So why not leverage time the most efficient way we can?
But thinking this way is a fool’s errand.
After all, time is not something that can be sped up. Or slowed down. Or packed and stacked to meet our agenda.
It moves at a constant rate.
Like the dripping of a faucet, that tick-tick-tick of the clock is relentless in its consistency. Always headed forward, but never in a hurry to get there.
Yes, it turns out time is the most finite form of currency there is.
Once a moment is gone, it can’t be recovered. Its only remnants lie in the banks of our memory. But the passage of time can cruelly take back those memories from us.
And of course, our existence itself is finite. Our hourglass will run out of sand someday. Yet, the tick-tick-tick of the clock, the rising and setting of the sun — those patterns will continue on.
Maybe that’s what terrifies us.
The lack of power and control. The inability to have final say over our destiny.
Perhaps this is why we feel we must dice up time like a tomato. Even if it’s better to mold time like a ball of clay.
Perhaps this is why we live in micromoments, run ourselves ragged for 19 hours a day, and become slaves to our email inboxes and phone calendars.
Perhaps this is why we continually race that tick-tick-tick of the clock, as if it’s Mario Andretti at the Indy 500.
All this running around might keep us stimulated. It might keep our cash balances replenished. It might help us get on the fast track to bettering our situation.
But there are significant tradeoffs for these outcomes.
When we run ourselves ragged, fatigue becomes normalized. Our attention spans erode. And regret eats away at us like a cancer.
This behavior doesn’t help us make the most of our life. It destroys it in the most brutal and calculating of ways.
The hour has come to end this destructive cycle. To give time the priority it deserves.
The hour has come to view time as a gift that’s given. Not a resource to be mined into oblivion.
The hour has come to value time more than money. Or any other factors competing for our attention.
We might lose some productivity when we commit to this shift in thinking. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
By prioritizing time, we gain freedom and fulfillment.
And that’s certainly worth striving for.