#75 - Most important investment: our time
4 min read

#75 - Most important investment: our time

What I’m Reading

This blog post by Sam Altman (founder of OpenAI behind ChatGPT) titled ‘How to be successful’ is the most valuable post I have read in recent memory. I resonate with every point here. Some took me a long time to learn and wish I had the opportunity to read and internalise this earlier in life. For example, in point 12, Sam states that ‘you get rich by owning things’ and almost no one gets wealthy just with a salary. I feel far too many people (my younger self included), particularly at the start of their careers over-emphasise jobs with a high salary and give too little thought to owning/building equity in something, investing for the long run or even picking careers that give intangible long-term benefits like exposure, opportunities and learning. I promise you won’t regret the 15 minutes spent reading it.

Resource of the week

Halifax releases a house price index report every month. It’s only 4 pages so it’s super compact and condenses a lot of information, which is useful to keep an eye on in these uncertain times.

Quote

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Steve Jobs

Thoughts

I often think about the Steve Jobs quote about asking yourself if you are living a fulfilling life true to yourself. In some ways, it has altered the trajectory of my life and continues to do so.

Most people would probably not choose to spend that last day doing something wild but doing something they enjoy or with family. However, statistically, we see that most people spend much less time with family and friends and more time alone and with co-workers as we age.

We let go and defer the things that are meaningful to us for comfort and certainty.

Nearly everyone agrees that time is our most valuable resource. However, people don’t behave in a way consistent with this belief. Nearly everyone would react strongly against it if I tried to steal £100 from them, but we often allow others to steal our time. There’s always an ‘urgent’ task or project or meeting on somebody else’s agenda and the issue is that the things that benefit us most long term get pushed back to someday. That someday becomes never. Most people let themselves get pushed around in terms of choosing how to spend their time. If you don’t have clarity about how you want to spend your time, often, others will make that decision for you.

Of course, we do live in reality, barring a fortunate few, we have no choice but to work. However, we do have a choice in what we work on and we can influence what that work looks like.

My dad’s childhood friend came to visit when I was back home with the family earlier this week, I’m very fortunate in that I get to spend time with my entire family for dinners quite often and he remarked that it was a precious thing. It turns out that my dad’s friend spent most of his working life growing a single restaurant in Shanghai to a national chain in China and Hong Kong all the while not having time to see his children who grew up in the UK. Now the kids are grown adults, they are like strangers. It’s something he regrets.

Keeping this in mind has given me a lot more clarity on how I decide to spend my time with different people. Protecting my time when it comes to things like meetings, only taking them if it’s important to me and my presence is essential, keeping it as brief and to the point as possible. Learning to say no and stand my ground; understanding that some people will never be happy however much you try to please them. On the other hand, being conscious of every moment with people important to me, my family, friends and my girlfriend.

In a more general sense, it’s about not settling. Not doing unnecessary overtime, looking elsewhere if your job doesn’t offer the work-life balance you want.

It doesn’t just apply to family, it could be a project or hobby that is fulfilling to you. And it doesn’t have to be a drastic change in your life. A spare moment here and there, to learn a language in the evening, and take up a sport on the weekend, working on that business really adds up. For most of us, earning an extra 10% or 20% more by taking on more hours or a more stressful job with less work-life balance isn’t going to change our lives, but that freed-up time could make a big difference.

So what does your schedule look like? Is it balanced and are you doing enough of the things that make you happy? If not, is a change in order? Let me know by hitting reply, I read all responses.

Have a good week!

Hans