If I asked you what the most important thing in your life is, what would you say? Is it money? Health? Family? Friends? A hobby? Your career? Those are all fair answers to the question, and everyone’s priorities are different, but my answer is none of the above. My answer to the question of what is most important to me in my life is time.
Time is something that can never be recovered once spent. Time can’t be generated, stockpiled, or purchased. Time is a finite resource that (most likely) will never be controlled or commodified, and for me, time is the driver behind the wheel of everything that is important to me in my life.
When it comes to time, I (unsurprisingly) find myself constantly striving to maximize productivity while minimizing waste. When I say productivity, I don’t necessarily mean making money or accomplishing goals. Productivity in this context is amorphous, and it doesn’t even have to be something that is quantifiable. I suppose at the highest level, I would equate productivity to satisfaction. The million-dollar question for me has always been “how do I spend my time to maximize the satisfaction I receive from the time I spent?”(<- I will refer to this as “the question” throughout this post).
After many trials and tribulations, I found that a cost-benefit framework is an effective strategy for helping to answer “the question.” The cost benefit framework essentially involves identifying all the possible ways I could spend my time (which I will refer to as “activities”), estimating the satisfaction I would receive from each activity under consideration (both near and long-term satisfaction), and acknowledging the risk associated with each activity under consideration (if applicable).
Because the cost benefit framework may not be entirely straightforward, I will use a case study from the recent past to illustrate how I successfully (and unsuccessfully) employed the cost benefit framework.
The period of 2018 through the end of 2019 was probably the most challenging time I have faced to date from the standpoint of “the question.” During this period, I was trying to finish the IOS app I was developing, trying to finish my 1950s era wood hull boat restoration project, trying to finish “project fish” (catching every species of gamefish in WNY and documenting it on my YouTube channel), and trying to make time for my friends in Buffalo (my home town).
Concurrently, I had just started my new job (two hours’ driving distance from Buffalo), and my company was onboarding a slew of recent graduates, many of whom regularly asked me to hang out/get food/go to parties etc. (essentially tried to befriend me).
During this period in my life, I had to practice some hardcore prioritization. Each weekend was a decision point: do I go back to Buffalo and work on my boat/project fish/hang out with my longtime friends, or do I stay put in my new town and make new friends? Each weekday was also a decision point; after work; do I work on my IOS app or try to make new friends?
In general, I believe I successfully navigated the waters. This is not to say I made all the right moves, but I think I more or less got it right. How did I manage to pull off this fine balancing act, you ask? Using the cost benefit framework, of course.
At first glance, the above seems messy: multiple goals, my ability to work on those goals changing with the seasons (especially the fishing and the boat activities), and multiple temptations to derail my pursuits.
The first step was to distill the mess to its core essence. The core essence of the above is essentially a dichotomy: spend my time going back to Buffalo to pursue my personal goals and hang with my longtime buds or spend my time making new friends in my new town and try to build a life for myself there. There was minimal room for compromise, and this is where the cost benefit framework comes in.
Let’s examine both the short and long-term satisfaction I would have expected to receive by following each of the possible paths. Going back to Buffalo for projects/longtime friends: minimal short-term satisfaction, especially for the boat project where the work was at many times arduous, combined with the required two-hour drive to Buffalo. Staying in my new town to make new friends: high short-term satisfaction, as going out for drinks/food is usually pretty enjoyable. The decision is simple, right? Just stay put and make new friends, it’s fun and easy!
Wrong. We also need to consider the long-term satisfaction I would receive from following each of the two possible paths. Going back to Buffalo for projects/longtime friends: high long-term satisfaction, as I would have a boat to ride in with my longtime friends, an IOS app I could either publish or use as a starting point for future work, and a bucket list item checked off for documenting all the different gamefish in WNY on camera. Staying in my new town to make new friends: minimal long-term satisfaction, being left with a bunch of useless contacts in my phone after those individuals (or I myself) leave for other opportunities or get laid off.
Which path did I follow? The go back to Buffalo for projects/longtime friends path. How did the situation actually play out? Exactly as predicted.
How could the situation have played out if I had done things differently? Very poorly. I could have gotten lazy and stayed in my new town to try to make friends instead of driving back to Buffalo to pursue my personal goals and enjoy my longtime friends. I could have gone out drinking on Fridays and participated in whatever activities the new hires had planned for the weekends. I could have plowed time and effort into developing new friendships, only to have those individuals (or myself) move away, leaving me with nothing more than a cluttered contact list and a handful of largely meaningless memories. Furthermore, I could have developed a reputation as someone who is all talk and no action, who says he will do things but lacks the ambition to finish his projects and instead is left with a bunch of loose ends.
Of course, you can’t always get it right. After all, the outcomes you predict that you use as inputs to the cost-benefit framework can be vastly different from what actually ends up happening. However, the mere fact that you actually stopped to think about how you should spend your time, instead of acting on impulse, will generally provide a very large return on investment.
If you also find yourself faced with “the question,” hopefully you will find the above helpful. The cost benefit framework isn’t foolproof, but it gets the job done nine times out of ten.
