coin of your life

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“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

Carl Sandburg

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In a world where we so often talk about time being money I am surprised we don’t see this quote more often.

Oh.

Sorry.

I know why. Because it suggests you control your time and popular wisdom suggests that our time is out of our hands (and that there is not enough of it).

Carl suggests a different perspective.

Time is currency in your wallet and just like that ten dollar bill you have a choice how and where and when to spend it.

I am sure there has been a book written suggesting this, but suffice it to say thinking about time as money in your own wallet that you have to spend (and earn) is actually a useful thought.

It’s bigger than “time management” and closer to “time budgeting.”

Anyway.

A similar thought <which I liked> is time spent is not distance covered. I don’t know who wrote this, or said this, but it seemed appropriate here.

How we use our time is a discussion I am fairly sure we will never tire of.

Well. We may tire of it but we will never stop discussing.

Mostly because we worry whether we are using it wisely, or efficiently or whether we even have any control of our own time at all. In addition many of us assess our time investment by ‘distance covered’ <distance being defined by any variety of something tangible so that we can have some type of ‘measurement’>. In fact, we use measurement in some fairly absurd ways to judge time.

Look. I see many <many> people spending the coins of their life, not flippantly for sure, but I question whether they do so wisely. There is more time spent on … well … time … than almost anything else I can think of. People, websites, apps, far too many other things to list, all telling you how you should spend your time, on what, and how, and for what. So many people being told HOW to invest their time.

But it’s your money. Do you really want others spending it?

Sure.

We all have responsibilities but at some point, I admit this may be a selfish perspective, if I only have ten dollars of time I sure as hell do not want to let someone spend all ten dollars for me.

To be clear, whether I really know what I am talking about what I do know for sure is that Carl makes a valid point.

One which I believe is worth thinking about. Ponder.