Imagine if at the end of your life you could look at a pie chart sliced into different categories of how much total time you spent on a particular activity. Somethings, obviously, would jump out more than others. Sleeping, for example, would theoretically take up to 1/3 of the chart. What would be more appalling, however, would be the amount of time wasted on frugal things i.e. Facebook.
Suppose you spend 10mins a day on an activity ‘x’. That is 2.53 days/year of a full 24hour day spent on that activity. What’s more alarming is how it scales for the more time spent on the activity, and the longer the time investmed, because obviously, we’d expect to live much longer than one more year. 2.53/per year becomes 12.67 days/5 years and 126.74/50 years. 10 minutes a day might not seem like much here or there, but it all adds up.
What happens when we extend the time spent on the particular activity ‘x’ to half an hour? Two hours?
Activity ‘x’ becomes a bigger slice of your “Life Experience” pie the more total time that is invested. A mere 30mins of your day spent on activity ‘x’ becomes 7.60 days/year, 38.02 days/5 years, and 380.21 days/50 years.
2 hours on activity ‘x’ becomes 30.42 days/year – a whole month spent on that activity, 152.08 days/5 years, and 1,520 days/50 years spent on that single activity. Can you imagine spending 4.2 years on a single activity? I’m no finance major, but talk about a long term investment.
Conclusion: prioritize your life with the long term in mind. Aristotle goes into great depth on his theory of happiness, discerning between pleasure and true happiness. Pleasure being immediate gratification, true happiness stemming from long term growth – being able to look back on your life and cherish the memories and personal development that went underway.