Feels like he's nagging....................

 

People underestimate themselves and overestimate how long things take.

You can do far more than you think, far better, and far faster.

-Shane Parrish, from here

Tiny Thoughts....................

 

We spend time chasing money, then spend money chasing time.

-Shane Parrish, from this edition

currency...............

 

the time value of money................

 

For Turgot, as sum of money delivered immediately and the promise of the same amount of money at some future date could not possibly have the same value.  Time preference explains why Aristotle was wrong.  Interest is the difference in monetary values across time, the rate at which present consumption is exchanged for future consumption.  Interest represents the time value of money.

-Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

choices.......................

 

'I don’t have enough time' is not a useful phrase when it comes to anything related to your dream. It’s okay to actively choose to do something or not, but don’t blame time.

-Alexi Pappas, as quoted here

just do it..............................

Almost nobody wants to hear the real answer to the question of how to spend more of your finite time doing things that matter to you, which involves no system.  The answer is: you just do them.  You pick something you genuinely care about, and then, for at least a few minutes—a quarter of an hour, say—you do some of it.  Today.  It really is that simple.  Unfortunately, for many of us, it also turns out to be one of the hardest things in the world.

-Oliver Burkeman,  Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

knots.................

O Time, thou must untangle this, not I;

It is too hard a knot for me t' untie.

-Viola

-William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, or, What You Will:  Act II, Scene II

wildly.............................

. . . humans are wildly optimistic when we estimate how much time is needed to complete cognitive efforts.

-Cal Newport,  Slow Productivity

On time......................

 You don't need more time because you already have all the time that you will ever get; you need more focus.

-Kevin Kelly

time......................................

 

Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.

-M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

guardianship...................

. . . we are not poor in days, but wasteful of them.  When great and kinglike riches fall into the hands of a bad master, they are dispersed straightway, but even a moderate fortune, when bestowed upon a wise guardian, increases by use: and in like manner our life has great opportunities for one who knows how to dispose of it to the best advantage. 

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On The Shortness of Life

Wedged...............................

 Wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now.

-Anthony Burgess, as quoted in this Martin Amis piece

Hope........................

 Time, and the work of changing days, has made

Many a bad thing good; fortune has played

With many men, and set them firm again.

-Virgil, as channeled by Montaigne, Book 2, Chapter 3

time.........................

 I hope there's time

for this and that,

and not just this.

-Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

Bags of time.....................

 When the keeper of the inn

where we stayed in the Outer Hebrides

said we had bags of time to catch the ferry,

which we would reach by traversing the causeway

between this island and the one to the north,

I started wondering what a bag of time

might look like and how much one could hold.

Apparently, more than enough time for me

to wonder about such things,

I heard someone shouting from the back of my head.

Then the ferry arrived, silent across the water,

at the Lochmaddy Ferry Terminal,

and I was still thinking about the bags of time

as I inched the car clanging onto the slipway

then down into the hold for the vehicles.

Yet it wasn't until I stood at the railing

of the upper deck with a view of the harbor

that I decided that a bag of time

should be the same color as the pale blue

hull of the loan sailboat anchored there.

And then we were in motion, drawing back

from the pier and turning toward the sea

as ferries had done for many bags of time,

I gathered from talking to an old deckhand,

who was decked out in a neon yellow safety vest,

and usually on schedule, he added,

unless the weather has something to say about it.

-Billy Collins

Capability.......................

We have to deal with things that we're capable of understanding.

I'm really better at determining my level of incompetency and then just avoiding that.

You have a limited amount of time and talent and you have to allocate it smartly.

-Charlie Munger, as culled from here

A simple equation......................

 Life Fulfillment = Time + Health + Money.

Apply this equation to creating meaningful experiences. Rinse and repeat.

Money isn’t last in the formula by accident. A billion dollars isn’t enough to overcome poor health and to starve yourself of meaningful experiences. Conversely, a modest sum of money goes a long way, combined with optimal health and strong social connections.

Many investors ignore this logic at their peril. Obsessing over money and letting it supersede time and health is the path to anxiety and disappointment, no matter how “rich” a person is perceived.

-Tony Isola

A few more snippets......................

...........from Oliver Burkeman's 4000 Weeks:

 The struggle for certainty is an intrinsically hopeless one—which means you have permission to stop engaging in it.

. . . our expectations are forever running up against the stubborn reality that time isn't in our possession and can't be brought under our control.

You only ever get to feel certain about the future once it's already turned into the past.

There is a very down-to-earth kind of liberation in grasping that there are certain truths about being a limited human from which you'll never be liberated.  You don't get to dictate the course of events.  And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality's constraints is that they no long feel so constraining.

We treat our plans as though they are a lasso, thrown from the present around the future, in order to bring it under our command.  But all a plan is—all it could ever possibly be—is a present-moment statement of intent.  It's an expression of your current thoughts about how you'd ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future.  The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply.

To treat all these moments solely as stepping-stones to some future moment is to demonstrate a level of obliviousness to our real situation that would be jaw-dropping if it weren't for the fact that we all do it, all the time.

Our obsession with extracting the greatest future value out of our time blinds us to the reality that, in fact, the moment of truth is always now—that life is nothing but a succession of present moments, culminating in death, and that you'll probably never get to a point where you feel you have things in perfect working order.  And that therefore you had better stop postponing the "real meaning" of your existence into the future, and throw yourself into life now.

300%......................................?

 . . . ultimately, all of us are at least 300% more effective if we focus on doing one task at a time.  Multiple, independent studies show this to be true.  Still don't believe me?  Just search online "multitasking is a myth" and read to your heart's content.  One study even tested a group of people that considered themselves "good" at multitasking.  The reality was that test subjects were about as effective at accomplishing simple tasks as members of the control group who were high on marijuana. 

-Mark Dolfini, The Time-Wealthy Investor 2.0

on the verge......................

     My adventures with Inbox Zero were only the tip of the iceberg.  I've squandered countless hours—and a fair amount of money, spent mainly on fancy notebooks and felt-tip pens—in service to the belief that if I could only find the right time management system, build the right habits, and apply sufficient self-discipline, I might actually be able to win the struggle with time, once and for all.  (I was enabled in this delusion by writing a weekly newspaper column on productivity, which gave me an excuse to experiment with new techniques on the grounds that I was doing so for work purposes; I was like an alcoholic conveniently employed as a wine expert.) . . .Using these techniques often made me feel as if I were on the verge of ushering in a golden era of calm, undistracted productivity and meaningful activity.  But it never arrived.  Instead, I just got more stressed and unhappy.

-Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks:  Time Management for Mortals