sids blog

Ninety percent of the things you do in a day are useless. And since days make up your life, this is a pretty important issue. It’s hard to understand the value of things in the moment because everything that feels urgent seems important. Most of the time, it’s not even urgent—it just feels that way.

We pick up too many responsibilities.

I tried saying no to stuff, but that didn’t work very well. What works great is saying yes to the really important things. If I say yes to workouts, then I am going to eat healthy because I want to fuel my workouts, and I am going to sleep well because it is a performance enhancer. The same goes for the projects I am working on: if the projects are interesting and demand learning from me, I am going to allocate more time to them and less to distractions that drain me. The same principle applies to money; instead of trying to save money, it helps to focus on creating value, because the more value you create, the more you get paid. Having money is a good thing—it saves time and lets you buy more time by outsourcing mundane tasks, which again frees up time for new, meaningful personal projects.

We tend to squander free time, as free time makes us lazy, dysfunctional, and unmotivated. The busier you get, the more active you are at other tasks.