Now that I’ve baited you in with the title, let me go ahead and say it: I didn’t really mean that.
You shouldn’t tell money to fuck off. In fact, it’ll more than likely tell you to fuck off first. How? Through the simple act of playing hard to get. I think we all know that feeling; we can never get enough money when we want it. We’ll save that topic for another day, though. The point of this post is quite simple, in that the message shouldn’t be misconstrued. Here’s what I mean.
Money is cool, and making a lot of money can also be cool. But don’t do it at the expense of your time. What does that mean? It means that money is something that comes and goes, but time doesn’t. Whether you like it or not, time is constantly subtracted from your life. Money, on the other hand, is subtracted and added. If you add more than you subtract, you’d guess right – you’re profiting and doing well. If you subtract more than you add – well, you better figure out a quick way to reverse it.
Time is a tricky son of a bitch…it’s notoriously quick to disappear and impossible to get back, no matter how hard you try. It’s also one of the biggest things we regret wasting, more so than money, resources, and emotions combined.
The Test
If you were given the option of $5 million dollars cash with the caveat that your life would end exactly 20 years before your original “expiration date” was, would you take it? Sadly, many would. The instant gratification of the fairly large amount of cash is just too hard to pass up.
Assuming you did accept it, I’d wager that either through the irresponsible use of the money or the realization that it’ll only get you so much, you’d want that 20 years back at some point down the line. Unfortunately, that’s not how time works. The money, on the other hand, could potentially be recollected. It would take determination, effort, and persistence, but it’s possible.
For the ones who wouldn’t take the above offer, what if it changed to $10 million cash but you were only alive for another 10 years? Many still wouldn’t take it, but some would. But the same shit applies that I mentioned above.
Here’s the point in the exercise: at some point, if enough money were on the table, most of us would make some pretty irrational decisions in the face of the time we have here on Earth. But the problem is even without the lure of big money, or any money, we still find ourselves wasting a lot of time.
So here’s the reality: throughout our life, a large number of us end up wasting years on things we regret. And after the years of collective wasting have already added up, do we have $5 million in the bank? Or even $10 million? Chances are we have way less. So stop sacrificing your time on the shit that doesn’t matter.