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Time is the most valuable commodity
Imagine if a man from ancient Athens was somehow able to be transported into our modern world. How astonished he'd be!
He'd gasp at the huge metal cylinders we travel through the air in, the screens that bring us every type of knowledge available at the press of a button, and the ingenious cures we've found for diseases.
And even more amazing to him would be how banal it all seems to us . Instead of expressions of wonder, he'd hear us complaining about airplane food, boring websites, and expensive pharmaceuticals. To an ancient Athenian, we live in a miracle world, but miracles are so commonplace now that we consider them all a bit of a bore.
Why is it that we have so many fabulous things compared to our ancient ancestors?
We're no smarter than they were - we just have to read Plato to realize that. We live on the same Earth, with the same resources, and the same sun shining down on us. We have the same basic desires - love, security, health and prosperity.
What's the magic ingredient that separates us from them? Our incredible world from their more basic one?
Time.
We've had a few thousand more years to figure stuff out. To work and build up our infrastructure. We can fly through the air, split atoms, and banish smallpox because we've applied the most valuable commodity in the world to them - time.
And those that come after us will likely achieve even more astounding feats. Once again, they'll have access to the same base resources and brainpower that we do, but they'll have had more time.
Time is not only extremely valuable as a resource, but also quite unusual. It can't be stored, recycled, stopped or transformed. Once it's lost, it's gone forever.
Each of us is extremely limited in our time on this planet. At best, we can hope for around ten decades of it. And then it's all lost.
Without our time, everything else is useless to us. No other resource has any value unless it's mixed with time. You can't take it with you, as the old saying goes.
Yet most people treat their time as an unlimited resource. They blow it on boring and pointless activities.
They spend too much of it chained to a desk, staring at a machine. They squander it by inventing work that's just procrastination, instead of doing what really needs to be done. They waste their days drugged-out, watching soap operas, or agonizing about how unfair it all is.
Many smart people recognize this problem and try to improve the value of their time. They attend time-management courses and read books on how to write lists of things to do.
But all this seems like just more procrastination and waste, more often than not . Time-management is simple - you just ask yourself what is the best use of this resource that I could be making? Is what I'm doing really necessary, or is there something I could be extracting even more value from? No fancy lists are required.
Most of all, people should think carefully about what's most valuable to them. Many time-management addicts seem to wrap themselves up in doing pretty boring stuff that makes them miserable. They feel something can only be important if it hurts.
The most valuable use of time, in my opinion, is spending it on those moments that make you feel great to be alive. Those simple times when you catch yourself and think: "Isn't it just bloody fantastic to be here?".
All our discoveries, our infrastructure, and our work should be working towards that one purpose - making us as happy as we can possibly be. This sounds easy, but it isn’t. There are too many obstacles standing in the way: disease, war, poverty, jealousy and so on.
There are all sorts of problems, like these, that we haven't yet solved. Yet there are also many we've conquered - which should give anyone hope about the prospects for the others. Throw enough cleverly-used time at almost any challenge, and you're likely to eventually solve it. It may take ten thousand years, but experience suggests it's possible to get there.
If you're going to spend the most valuable commodity in the world, you have to take care to do so wisely. And in the end what we all really want is happiness, for ourselves and those we care about.
What better use could there be for our precious moments than attempting to maximize that?
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