In the past 18 months after graduation, I’ve often felt this sense of regret / remorse over how I’ve used my time. It was really hard to put my finger on it, until recently.
The difference is in spending your time vs. investing your time.
Spending your time:
- operates on short time horizons — expects immediate payoff
- very little to no enduring value
Investing your time:
- oriented towards the long term — expects future payoff
- benefit compounds over time Increased freedom should result in more time that can be invested.
In practice though, I’ve found myself drifting in the opposite direction. After college, I have many more mundane responsibilities (transportation, dishes, laundry, trash, rent, taxes, jury duty, house cleaning), that make me want to spend time on “comforting” activities.
In contrast, during high school and college, basically all my free time was being invested, even though I had less free time. It did get extreme: in high school I had my math research notebooks 24/7 (including in social gatherings and in restaurants), and in college I brought my laptop to do work on every family vacation (I used to lament vacations since they took away work time — I’ve since realized vacations are an important investment to doing higher quality work through getting rest and new perspectives).
After living for 18 months with a lower investment/spending ratio in time usage, I’ve realized that investment may just be a better way to use time in general. I’ve come to realize I often find very little enduring satisfaction in spending time (playing chess, video games, watching Netflix / YouTube), and much more meaning in investing time (in faith, in relationships, in exercise, in work, in reading, in cleaning the house, in journaling, etc.)
Instead of asking how much time can I get away with spending & relaxing, perhaps the question should be, what’s the least amount of time I need to spend?