Limited Time Only
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically revealed just how unpredictable life can be. And while it has taken much from us, many of us have found ourselves with an unusual amount of time to spend. If nothing else, we have a chance to reflect on the value of time and how we use it – not just now, but all through life.
Here are a few things – let’s call them axioms – to remember about the time we have:
It’s finite.
We don’t know how much of it we have.
It can’t be bought, sold, refunded or reversed.
Although we may not have control over the amount and pace of this time, we do have control over what we do with it. Yet, if our time is finite and life is unpredictable, how do we plan how to use it?
Unpredictability doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan. Plans are how we foresee possible problems and figure out how to make good use of our lives. And, pandemics aside, we can have time to be thoughtful about what we do.
But just how thoughtful we are can depend on the time and resources we have, and the value of what we’re planning to achieve. Whatever it is, it better be worth the time we spend planning for it.
Many plans seek to answer the question ‘What am I going to do with my life?’, but I find this often also implies asking ‘What am I going to do for a career?’. While these are valid questions, their answers can also reveal some questionable ideals that permeate our culture.
For instance, it’s problematic when we’re encouraged to believe that success means attaining a reputable title and that our worth is measured by the amount of money or fame we accrue.
Setting our focus in this way could mean using our precious time to set goals aimed at standards that don’t resonate with us. And if the unpredictability of life puts planning in jeopardy, it’s important to consider the value of goals against the price and likelihood of achieving them.
Say you want to become successful. You might start by asking what success would mean to you, because we’re often encouraged to strive towards definitions of success that don’t account for our individual differences.
But even if you have your own solid idea of success, how do you get there? Maybe you talk to some people who accomplished what you want to do.
While there might be something to learn here, when determining what brought that success, we, and the successful among us, can greatly underemphasise the importance of luck. Indeed, the current global situation is showing us how terribly bad luck is affecting many people through no fault of their own.
We can also fail to see the survivor bias at play. Think of it this way: how often do we seek advice on success from those who haven’t attained it? Intuition says to go to the successful people, but for every successful person there could be many who were unsuccessful around us. And many of the latter may have done all the same things as the former. Ultimately, we may never know because unsuccessful people don’t often write books or give public talks about success.
Perhaps we can’t rely on the giants and gurus to tell us how to achieve success. But we also shouldn’t rely on them to define it for us. Having our own definition of success is necessary when deciding whether a goal is worth pursuing. I wouldn’t be the first to say it’s better to define success for ourselves. But it’s worth repeating because contemporary culture so readily equates success with money and fame, while ignoring how and why it’s attained.
Fame is often reached by people who achieve something noteworthy. But some only achieve fame by deliberately seeking it out.
These two groups represent different possible paths to fame. But neither path will guarantee fame and only one holds promise that our achievements remain meaningful whether fame eventuates or not.
Also, regardless of how we find fame, it doesn’t come for free. By definition, it costs us our anonymity, which we may fail to see the value of until we no longer have it. It makes sense to weigh what we might gain against the time and anonymity we stand to lose.
Money, too, doesn’t come for free.
Money provides us potential to get what we need and want. But we all need and want different things, which cost different amounts of money. So how much of a role should the acquisition of money play in our lives?
We live in a market society built on the premise that we work for money to at least meet our basic needs, so clearly this will be a factor in any plans we make. But far beyond subsistence, there comes a point where we have to ask how many extra dollars are worth our time.
Research shows that for most people, money only increases happiness up to a point. Anything more makes so little difference to wellbeing that it hardly seems worth the effort. Either way, perhaps it’s not a question of how much we can make, but whether what we’re giving up is worth the dollars to be gained.
None of this is to argue that money and fame can’t be valuable, only that the pursuit of them for their own sake is problematic. However far we progress in whatever we choose to do, we should be sceptical about adopting the view that success requires such things.
There are more valuable things to be in life than rich and famous; many of those less-than-loaded people you’ve never heard of are still great people, with honesty, integrity and strength of character. Although developing those attributes takes time, few of them cost money.
The important choices we make in life will rarely be the things we choose to become – whether it be a butcher, a baker, or a computer-goods maker – but rather our approach to what we do and how we treat those around us. Whatever our abilities allow, we can always aim to become better people and better friends, and be more skilled at things that are meaningful to us. Perhaps, then, the question we asked earlier shouldn’t be ‘What am I going to do with my life?’, but ‘How am I going to live it?’
If you’re lucky enough to have the time to plan out what you want to achieve, perhaps it’s best not to measure your success by fame and money alone. If you’re really good and really lucky, fame and money might come from those achievements. But I wouldn’t waste my time worrying.
Kiall Camden is currently studying publishing and communications at University of Melbourne, and has strong interests in philosophy, science and psychology.