I was working, half listening to a random podcast. When you’re doing that, you’re not fully paying attention, but buzzwords or energy in someone’s voice can make you tune in tighter or rewind because you knew you missed something.
It was nothing monumental, but I heard the host say, “That’s a good investment of time,” and it made me pause.
I paused my work, paused the episode, and closed my door to give this a moment to think about.
A good investment of time.
I think we’ve heard hundreds of analogies and lessons about time. Time flies, take your time, use your time wisely, time waits for no one, and one of my favorites—
“Men talk of killing time, while Time slowly kills them.”
The thought of Time can feel like a Steven Pressfield book. Pressfield wrote about Resistance (“The War of Art”) as an energy, a noun, a figure, a person to overcome disguised as a friend pulling you off target.
Time has that quality.
You can use it, speed it up, slow it down, but as the podcaster said, you invest it.
Time is money might be the closest 1-1 comparison.
Ask anyone in hospice. Think they wouldn’t trade all of their purchases for more time?
It’s the thing we want and need more of, and we cannot create it.
We invest it.
Like investments, some are short term, some are long term. Some pay off ASAP, some take years. Some may never pay off. Some keep cashing in years after we’ve turned to dust.
Think of the ancient philosophers who basically still live. They invested time, wrote their path, and their influence is felt hundreds of years later. They may not be here to reap any rewards, but the investment continues to roll.
How about hitting the gym?
You go one day, you don’t see any results. You go a week, maybe even a month, you don’t see any results. Just like small deposits into a retirement account, you don’t see the interest accumulating in 30 days, right?
It takes Time.
Months. Years. Consistency.
The gym is that investment, and it pays off in the long run for those who invest. And it pays much more than a flex or the ability to press 140lb dumbbells.
It pays with mental growth and the stamina to get after hard, long work. The discipline to keep showing up when you don’t feel like it. These are additional attributes you build and obtain through the investment.
How about your education and skills?
Only supreme outliers are born with high-level ability, and I bet even most of those had a unique upbringing that, one way or another, supported their growth into who they became.
So how are you investing in your job skills?
Is it a weekend clinic? Is a weekend enough? Is it a degree? Is it on-the-job training?
Are you investing appropriately?
Are you giving all you can, or are you making minimum deposits?
If you’re not putting forth a worthy investment, the odds of a big payoff are greatly limited.
You get out of it what you put into it.
And thinking of that…
How about relationships?
I bet this is the hard one for people.
You can get a pretty good idea that degree X will result in job Y and salary Z, but what exactly is the “payday” in relationships?
How do we invest?
Maybe this is where you can sit and think like I did, about time and how you can invest it in relationships, because one way or another, they will pay off.
If it’s good, you both—all—reap the benefits. But one way or another, there will be benefits. There will be something to learn.
So how do you use your time?
Playing games, watching TV, and talking about people? Or do you read, work out, study life, spend time with people you care about?
Do you lose hours staring at a phone, or do you spend hours hanging out with an old friend?
Do you spend quality time with your husband/wife, or are you on autopilot?
Time flies.
Do you build skill, grow, adjust, and adapt, or are you stuck playing victim to the attacker you have narrated Life to be?
Since I was very young, I’ve had a weird awareness of Time.
I always knew it was fading.
It’s what made me “weird,” and that weird has made me different. That difference is why my conversations are different than most you have.
I am 100% aware every day that the next drive, the next cold, the next doctor’s visit, the next workout, the next talk, the next run, the next season, the next meal, the next anything could be the last.
It never leaves me.
Because of this, things can burn a little hotter and the dark can get a little darker.
“There ain’t gonna be a middle anymore.”
It’s all an investment.
Maybe the question isn’t whether you’re spending your time wisely.
Maybe it’s simpler than that.
What are you investing it in?
Excuse any spelling/grammar issues. Wrote this on a small phone with XXL thumbs.