Spend Your Limited Hours on People Who Want to Win

Time is easier to waste when I think of it as an unlimited supply. In a group conversation, I asked people to count their remaining waking hours instead of saying they had decades ahead. The number is still large, but it is finite, and every hour spent arguing with someone who does not want to act is an hour unavailable for work, learning, or people I care about.

That is why I pay attention to effort. If a person repeatedly makes a half-hearted attempt, then asks me to carry a goal they do not seem committed to themselves, I have to decide how much of my own time to give it.

Count the hours, then choose deliberately

I used a rough example in the session: sixty more years of life, with seven hours of sleep each night, leaves a little over 372,000 waking hours. It is an illustration, not a forecast of anyone's lifespan or schedule. Routine tasks take some of those hours. The point is to ask how many you want to spend on a relationship or project that produces no joy and no meaningful progress.

“how many hours do you want to waste with the wrong people”

The arithmetic can sound gloomy. I find it useful because it forces a choice. Hesitation is normal, and not every slow day means someone is the wrong person. I look for a pattern: are we both trying to improve the situation, or am I arguing with someone who does not intend to change anything?

The same limit is why I concentrate on a small number of serious pursuits. In my discussion of focusing on one or two things, I explain the trade-off between spreading time across everything and doing a few things well.

Let people see who you are

Another participant in the session described hesitation about showing more of their personality. My advice was to share what they were actually working on and let other people decide whether that was a good fit. Not everyone will like the firmer or stranger parts of you. The right people may appreciate them precisely because they are real.

I do not need everyone to agree with me. If someone is excited by the work, there may be a reason to spend more time together. If not, we can both move on without treating that as a personal injury. That also applies to a business arrangement: clear expectations let people decide whether to work together before either side invests much more time. I explain that in how I set expectations early.

Money cannot buy back the earlier years

Near the end of the recording, I used a wealthy older investor as a thought experiment. I asked whether someone with enormous wealth would trade much of it to be young again, and whether the audience would take the opposite side of that exchange. I cannot know what that person would actually choose. The question was meant to reveal how valuable time already is, even to someone who does not yet have much money.

I want to use my hours in a way I can defend: with people who are willing to participate in their own success, on work that matters to me, and with enough honesty that the right people can find me. The decision about any one relationship is personal. The limit on time is not.