Prioritize Your Time By Pretending It Is Money
One of the things that fascinates me about how monastic orders use time, is that they prioritize things that will not make a profit: activities like contemplation, and community service.
Most of us have important things we want to do in our lives, to live well-lived lives, that will not pull in a profit.
You might wonder how to make time in your life for activities like making art or writing or woodworking; volunteering for causes that are important to you; spending time with family and friends.
Thinking about time like we think about money can help you compare the value of different ways to use your time. This mental model can help you prioritize.
What if you thought of your time, like money?
What is true about both time, and money?
Two Eternal Truths About Time and Money
1) There are lots of competing demands for both your time, and your money. Everybody wants your money, and everybody wants your time. And you also need other people's money and time, in order to live. This is the way of the world.
2) If you spend money or time, you do not still have it available to use in a different way, later on: you can't both spend it, and keep it in reserve.
Money is exchanged for goods and services. Time is exchanged for experiences: right now, I am choosing to have the experience of writing this article; but part of me would really prefer to throw my binoculars in the car, and visit the heron rookery up the road. Another part of me would like to scroll stuff online. And I really ought to get some laundry done…
But I can only do one. You must choose, and your choices for any given moment will rule out all other choices for how you could have used that moment.
These eternal truths still annoy me; but there they are.
Pay Yourself First to Make Time for Your Deepest Aspirations
Pay yourself first with your time, as well as your money.
With money, "pay yourself first" means that as soon as money comes in, the first thing you do is to reserve some in savings for yourself, for your own well-being, for freedom from debt and anxiety in the future. (Obviously if you literally cannot afford to meet basic needs for survival, this is a very different problem.)
With time, “pay yourself first” means that before you schedule anything else, you FIRST reserve time for yourself to do what it is most important to you. Everything else can, and must, wait. (I also think of this principle as scheduling for constants and variables.)
Schedule your writing time first. Schedule your art-making time first. Put your meditation time, or workout time, or whatever it is that restores your soul — pay yourself first with that time.
Contemplative monastic orders schedule meditation and prayer time first. All of the rest gets worked in, after that. When the bell rings, everything else stops, and it is time for prayer. Otherwise, they would never have time to do it.
Paying yourself first often also means managing your anxiety: if, for example, I am anxious about my writing and procrastinate by scrolling on my phone, I do not get my writing done. I have let my anxiety use up that time.
If I am anxious about other people's reactions to my reserving some time for my deepest priorities, and instead I spend my best time meeting other people's demands, I do not get my writing done.
It is uncomfortable, especially if this is new to you, to pay yourself first when it comes to time. Expect the discomfort, and do it anyway.
Sooner than you think, this time may feel so viscerally important to you, that you will protect it without guilt.
In my case, I found that making time to write paradoxically makes me more relaxed and available to others, when they need my time.
Taking Time for Self-Care is Your Life Energy’s Savings Account
You need to set aside time to tend to your body and mind, to build up your physical and emotional reserves, and to restore your perspective and personal resilience.
Sometimes I think of my body and my emotions as if they were a beloved pet dog, needing daily care, and loving attention.
It takes hours every day to feed yourself, walk or exercise yourself, rest yourself. I don't know about dogs' inner lives (although I am sure that dogs have inner lives; one only has to watch a dreaming dog’s paws twitch), but humans' inner lives and social lives also take time.
It takes time to connect with your own inner voice through activities like meditation or journaling, and time to connect with people who are important to you.
You are not an exception to this rule.
Like all human beings, in order to thrive, you need: time to acquire and eat nutritious food, time to move and exercise your body, time to cultivate good relationships, time to reflect, time to do things that replenish your spirit, time set aside to get a good night's sleep, and time to tend to a home that is a sanctuary for you.
Investing Your Time, Versus Spending or Wasting Your Time
When you invest your time, you get returns in the future. It gives you something in the future. Also, it’s cumulative. Small, regular investments of time can pay off later in life in a big way: better physical health, rich relationships, a body of creative work.
When you invest your time, it grows more of something you want, in the future.
Making something, or learning something like drawing or playing the Irish flute. Building your skills. Cultivating richer and deeper relationships. A blog with a lot of writing on it, that turns into an intellectual asset. Better physical and mental health.
One of the best ways my husband and I invested our time, was reading books to our kids each night. We started with board books when they were infants on our laps, to sitting on the couch together and reading long novels a chapter at a time, when they were in middle school.
It built relationships, it gave us time to relax together, and we all pride ourselves on our voice acting. And our shared investment of reading time brings wonderful memories for me, that bring joy whenever I think of them.
Win. Win. Win.
When you spend your time, you are doing something that will not give you returns in the future.
Here is where time is NOT like money.
You cannot save time to use in the future. (”Oh, wow, next week looks busy; let me just move this slower day from this week, so I can give myself eight days for next week…”)
When we save money, it means we’re holding onto it and have the option to use it in the future, but time passes, passes, passes.
What are some things you do to “pass the time?”
If I spend time, there are no calculable returns in the future. For example, perhaps I watch a mystery show, by myself. I have enjoyed the time, but I haven’t built relationships by watching it with someone else; and I haven't learned anything that will help me in future. I just passed the time watching a show by myself.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
I just want to be sure I’m also investing time, and paying myself first.
When you waste your time, you’re doing something that puts Future You in time debt.
Wasting time is doing something that costs Future You more time to deal with the fallout.
When you waste time, you are doing something that puts you in debt to the calendar and the clock; you’re doing something that actively robs you of time in the future.
Let’s say instead of sitting down to get some work done, I succumb to the temptation to noodle around online. Perhaps I feel a little anxious about what I’m working on, so instead of focusing on the work, I decide instead to procrastinate by scrolling.
And sure enough, I come across something that pushes a hot button for me. I click some more links. Outrageous!! Splutter, splutter, splutter — ?How could they even —?!!! What’s the matter with those people, let me just put in my two cents.
For me, this is a waste of time.
An investment of my time, in response to something that outrages me, would be for me to mindfully donate my money and/or my time to alleviate the problem.
Self-righteous outrage is a feeling I wish I didn’t enjoy. But on some level, I do enjoy it. I’m sure there is a good evolutionary reason for this; but now that I am aware of the dangers that mindlessly following such feelings poses, I try to receive the message the feelings are giving me (“oh, wow, my moral code violation alert is clanging!”) and consider how I can usefully, constructively respond.
If I choose to waste my time on anger-tainment — expressing outrage online with internet strangers rather than investing my time to alleviate the problem; or I choose to read content that is algorithmically designed to snag my attention by whipping up my outrage, to keep me reading and clicking more links, growing ever more bug-eyed and red-faced — my focus is then shattered.
Now I am in time debt.
Now I have to take up some time that I could have invested or spent much more pleasurably on other things, to get a grip.
I have to use extra time — time I had other hopes and plans for — to calm down, to regain my focus, and to remember my true priorities.
The Currency of Time is Your Attention
Time is attention.
What you are doing in your head, is what you are doing with your time.
You might have had the experience of driving down a familiar highway and realizing you don't remember the last 25 miles because in your head, you were busy having an imaginary argument with someone.
What you turn your attention to, is where you spend your time.
What you turn your attention to, is also what you get good at doing.
Put your attention toward the things you want to be good at. It takes small, regular investments of your time and your attention to get good at something.
What do you want to be good at? What do you want to grow, in your life?
What do you want to look back on with satisfaction and quiet pride, where you say to yourself, that the time you used toward that, added up to a well-lived life?
When you know what that is…
Pay Yourself First.
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References
Hillary Rettig’s and Oliver Burkeman’s books below sparked my thinking for this essay.
Burkeman, O. (2021) Four thousand weeks: time management for mortals. First. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Rettig, H. (2011) The seven secrets of the prolific: the definitive guide to overcoming procrastination, perfectionism, and writer’s block. Hillary Rettig.