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WHAT DO BEN FRANKLIN, Charles Darwin and David Cassidy all have in common? All have advised us not to waste life’s precious time.
Almost everything about money translates into time. Money can buy us time—either more free time or more time spent on higher-value activities. Money can purchase a nicer house or car, a luxury vacation, greater financial support for our children, fun toys or experiences, reduced financial stress—and, eventually, a comfortable retirement. The financial independence-retire early, or FIRE, movement is really about controlling our future time.
As a retiree now reflecting on my life, my biggest regret has absolutely nothing to do with work, marriage, parenting, leisure, house or financial decisions. No, my biggest regret is the significant blocks of time that I let slip away.
College was my first opportunity to manage my own time. I didn’t lose much time, if any, to haircuts, shaving, washing clothes, keeping my room tidy, exercising or eating a balanced diet. But like many students, I spent countless hours socializing, partying, listening to records over and over, endlessly debating social issues and initiating my discovery of adult-ish norms.
Despite plenty of wasted time in college, I did manage to obtain an engineering degree and met the best wife ever. Better time management in college or higher grades wouldn’t have led to any significant changes in my life’s outcome.
On the other hand, I can look back and identify plenty of squandered time in the years since. Here are the six biggest time wasters that I now regret:
Watching TV. While not a big television fan, I have watched too much TV, particularly in my early adult years. Since acquiring a Betamax, at least I’ve skipped past the commercials. Today, my wife and I generally require a 75% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score before pressing “play.” Unlike most of my contemporaries, I still haven’t seen a single episode of Friends, Game of Thrones, Seinfeld or The Sopranos.
Surfing the web. Admit it, we have all been sucked in by click-bait to check out the biggest, smallest, scariest, longest, shortest, best, worst, happiest or saddest whatever. Twenty pageloads later, we discover we’ve been swept down a rabbit hole into the web cesspool. Much of the web is just a huge time waster. Fortunately, I have largely avoided its biggest time sink of all—social media.
Fretting excessively over schedules and expenses. As consummate planners, my wife and I have spent countless hours stressing over—and trying to perfect—time and cost issues. Our planning perfectionism has perhaps been our life’s biggest discretionary time waster. These days, I find that the 80-20 rule or a “good enough” solution will usually suffice.
Doing low-cost work. My wife and I performed nearly all household chores throughout our adult lives. As the children of Depression-era parents, it just felt right. This approach saved money, provided exercise, felt fulfilling and set a good example for our two kids. But in hindsight, as our financial circumstances improved, we probably should have loosened the purse strings a bit and paid for more services.
For example, we now fork over $40 to have the grass cut. The two workers use expensive, commercial-scale equipment to cut, edge, blow clean and remove the yard waste on nearly three-quarters of an acre in less than 25 minutes. I couldn’t compete. The work would take me three hours or more, plus a significant financial outlay just to get the equipment.
Shopping. My wife and I are careful shoppers—perhaps too careful. We’ve spent far too many hours penny-pinching and fine-tuning our purchases. For perspective, let’s assume a $20-an-hour wage for basic labor translates to 33 cents per minute. On that basis, to be worthwhile, coupons, sales or penny-pinching activities ought to provide a greater return on the time expended. That means, if we use a 15-cent coupon, the total time we spent to find it, print it, cut it out and process it at the grocery store should ideally take no more than 30 seconds.
Today’s 15-cent coupon is equivalent of a nickel coupon from 40 years ago, when we spent plenty of time managing nickel coupons. I’m not sure it was worth our time then. It certainly isn’t now. Similarly, purchases that are made solely because they’re “on sale”—rather than because of need—have a high likelihood of being a net time sink.
Commuting. Long commutes were my life’s biggest block of squandered time, yet I don’t fully regret them. I willingly powered through my drive so that our family could live in a resort area that we all enjoyed.
The next logical question is, what would I have done with any additional time? I have no idea, but I hope I would have devoted it to something more worthwhile than extra TV watching. I doubt the great American novel is within me. But snippets of additional time could have allowed me more exercise, sleep, family time or writing time—all of which increase my peace of mind.
As I age, I’m more careful with time, particularly if it falls into the six time-wasting categories listed above. As seniors, we’re more aware that our time is starting to run out. That’s why the best advice is always, “Don’t waste your time.”
John Yeigh is an author, speaker, coach, youth sports advocate and businessman with more than 30 years of publishing experience in the sports, finance and scientific fields. His book “Win the Youth Sports Game” was published in 2021. John retired in 2017 from the oil industry, where he negotiated financial details for multi-billion-dollar international projects. Check out his earlier articles.
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After being asked about what happened to the million dollar lottery prize he won, George Best allegedly replied, “I spent half of it on women, booze and fast cars. The rest of it I just wasted.”
One person’s poison…
So it is with time and being a time millionaire as I like to refer to myself now that we’ve fully retired.
The way I like to think about it is, it’s not what we do with our time, it’s that whatever we do with it, we choose to do it. We spend our time with intention. This is why I like to think about it in terms of “spending time.” If I choose to relax into some banal tv show, as long as I’ve conciously chosen to do so, I don’t mind what the critics think of my choice.
When my kids were young, I commuted 50 miles a day (round-trip) to my job. I know some people have longer commutes, but it was long enough, and between the drive, the kids, and my job, I was always exhausted.
In 2008, I was fortunate to get a job offer in the town where I live. Now we live two miles from my work; I even walk to work some days. I remember the first thing I noticed was that I started cooking dinner for the family, much to my teenager’s astonishment(!). Just having that extra time and energy from not commuting enabled me to do a much better job of feeding us in a more healthy manner.
Not everyone can just snap their fingers and make a job change like I did, but in the COVID era where so many more jobs can be remote, a lot more people can cut commuting out of their lives like I was able to. It absolutely improved my quality of life.
I still find it fascinating when I have to go out during “rush hour” that there now seems to be an equal amount of traffic going in each direction. In my earlier working/commuting days, most of the traffic was going in one direction – same as mine. Just an observation.
I concur. Since so many people “work” from home, I also find that there is traffic all day, not just at rush hour.
I used to think that long commutes were a waste of time, but then i decided to do something about it.
When i took the train, I made a goal of reading at least one book monthly. Before long I read 12 books I would otherwise not have before the year was over.
When i drove 3 to 4 hours a day at another job, I listened to books on tape and also incredibly informative podcasts. In fact after listening to several podcasts on internet businesses, I started one myself to the point of hiring virtual assistants overseas.
Now i view my commute as sacred time to be spent on self development activities. At home it is too easy to drop myself on the couch, browse social media, Youtube and now Tiktok.
Indeed I listened to books on tape and then on CDs, plus my favorite radio shows. More about my 2 million driving miles are described in this article:
https://humbledollar.com/2022/02/road-to-nowhere/
Thank you. I try to avoid TV as well and never turn it on during the day. However, it appears your TV overindulgence in your early years has now prevented you from watching some truly excellent shows (or at least being “75% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score”) because the 4 shows you list are each far above 75% and a couple of them are truly outstanding in this reader’s opinion.