Are you busy? Like, all the time? Or do you at least feel that way? 😅

I know I feel busy all the time. Between entertaining kids, writing, making dinner, picking up kids, managing tantrums, trying to decompress and get some exercise in, try to hang out with my wife once in a while. And in earlier days, you could replace some of those kid things with work meetings and deliverables and with meeting up with friends.

Interestingly, about 90% of the time I get a little extra bandwidth, (unless I'm really running on fumes) my immediate reaction is to say "great. now I can do that OTHER thing."

🤔

I was listening to Nick Wignall on a podcast recently, and he talked about people living paycheque to paycheque. What advice would you give them if they suddenly got a 10% raise? I know what we would NOT say: Oh great, here are new things to spend your extra money on. We would probably advise them to build an emergency fund right? So that they can handle life's inevitable punches.

Wignall talks about how a lot of us are living paycheque to paycheque with our time. We get more time? We spend it right away.
And so when I get some extra time and then squeeze in something new to do, I'm like that person who makes poor choices that keeps them living paycheque to paycheque.

Instead, maybe I need to take a step back and just save a little bit of my time, invest it into bandwidth that I can use to handle life's inevitable punches (like a kid with a runny nose that can't go to daycare or school that day). I've been trying to do that lately and even earmark time just for play (though I often call it decompression time just to feel more legit). That's a discussion for another day.

Before we sign off, I'd like to play with the analogy as a thought experiment. Let's say you do get a 10% raise. Building up an emergency fund is a great idea. But so is making a capital investment that would lower your cost of living. Like buying a laundry machine so you don't have to go to the laundromat. 💦 Translating that to the subject of spending your time, it would be like using the extra time to learn a skill that might lead to a promotion or new job. So you're busy in the short term but with the idea that it'll lead to EXTRA bandwidth in the future.

Which would be awesome … but maybe still comes a step after building an emergency fund.

🤷‍♂️😊
So when does it make sense to spend the extra time and when does it make sense to invest it as "life bandwidth"? What's something you took on recently and you were happy with your choice?

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Living paycheque to paycheque with my time ⏰