Time

Time is the most valuable and least replaceable resource. Just like money, time must be explicitly managed. If you get 10% more done and 1% better every day compared to someone else, the compounded difference is massive. Days are long but decades are short.

• Remember that you are dying. We have limited time and we must choose how to spend it. Unfortunately, we rarely take the time to consciously do this.
• One of the most costly mistakes you can make is not valuing your time. One of the most selfish mistakes you can make is not valuing other people's time.
• Learn to prioritize, and value your time. "I don't have time" is another way of saying "it's not a priority". Busyness is a lack of priorities.
  • Doing one thing requires giving up another. Whenever you explicitly choose to do one thing, you implicitly choose not to do another thing. Embrace the many things you'll never do.
  • Your work will be endless, but your time is finite. You cannot limit the work so you must limit your time. Hours are the only thing you can manage.
  • Learn to say no. Be ruthlessly deliberate with your time and attention. We guard our money carefully yet we often treat our time as if it's a limitless resource.
• Lists help you to summarize your next steps and to not lose focus. If you place them in a very visible place it makes easier to accomplish Goals.
  • Decompose lists items into smaller steps.
• Doing the same thing over and over again without getting tired is what computers are good at, humans have other skills.
• Time is not fungible. The value of saving some time on a certain thing would depend on the time of the day, day of the week, how much stamina you have, and how bored you are, among other things.
• If a task takes less than two minutes, do it. It'll make you more productive and also unclutter your mind task's backlog.
• Do the tasks in the right order! One strategy might be starting with the one that could make the others irrelevant or easier.
• Time-boxing is Planning how you spend your days in advance and it's so effective because it allows you to iterate. If you didn't complete everything you outlined, you know exactly why – because you've documented how you planned to spend your time.
• You'll never have any more time. You have, and have always had, all the time there is. How you spend your time is a choice.
• Success can be measured in the percentage of time you have under your control. To achieve success:
  • Compound yourself. Compounding is magic. Keep long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together.
  • Learn to think independently.
  • Make it easy to take risks. Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward. It's often easier to take risks early in your career; you don't have much to lose, and you potentially have a lot to gain.
  • Build a network. Help people as much as you can.
• Work expands to fill the time available. If you have six months to complete a task, it will take six months to complete. That's Parkinson's law.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Life is lived in 16 hours mini-episodes that we can affect.
• Protect attention. Attention is a ridiculously valuable resource and should be treated as such. Reduce cognitive load, reduce distractions, reduce mental clutter, etc.
  • Some activities will make you experience time quicker but won't provide any new and significant memories. Rapid stimulating streams of experience (news, twitter feed, mindless browsing, …) will provide a fullness that will make time fly away. Retrospectively, they won't provide any fulfillment and make it seem like nothing happened.
  • Routines speed up your life. Time will blow by quicker if you are covered in meaningless routines. What is worse, your days will become blurred - each day - too similar to the next - for you brain to hold on to distinct memories. On the other hand, routines also help to reduce decision fatigue so that you have room for more important decisions. Make sure the routines you have are the ones you need.
• Things you use for a significant fraction of your life are worth investing in.
• The window of time we can expect things to remain the same is decreasing. Things change faster and faster. To save time we do "technology". Technology gives us extra time and deeply affect how we live.
• Mortality is the main source of scarcity. If we had infinite time, we would be less concerned with whether something was faster. The reason speed has value is because time has value; the reason time has value is because human life has value, and lifespans are finite. If you made lifespans much longer, you'd reduce the effective cost of everything. The ultimate purpose of technology is to eliminate mortality.
• Spend money on experiences.
• Calm down, gain autonomy over your choices, and make better ones.