If you have spent any significant part of your life broke as hell, you’ve gotten in the habit of checking the price of any item you want. You have regretfully left items on the shelf because, as much as you would like to try the New and Improved garlic toast with little bits of cheddar and jalapeno, you just can’t afford 3.79 right now. But you know how to adjust. You know how to make Ramen and random leftovers into dinner. You know which Stop & Rob has The Bomb for 1.99 instead of 2.49. You pick out all the quarters before you take your seat cushion change to the Coinstar rather than pay the 11.9% vig. You know you have to budget, not unless you want to try to make 25.91 cover your food for a week.
So why do you splurge on everything else? I said in another essay to make a budget but I want you (and me) to be more clear about the cost of things. As a human you are much more attuned to things that are right in your face than to abstract concepts. That’s why religions, the successful ones anyway, give us the image of a scary guy, watching and judging you at all times. It’s why just painting a watchful face on a building reduces vandalism and theft. And it’s why you can’t manage your time.
What I present here isn’t another lecture on the importance of time. You’ve heard that before but Things Happened. What I want to give you is not another lecture but a tool. Here it is: Add up, specifically, how much time things will take you. Not just in the abstract — “a long time”, but be as exact as you can. For example, suppose you play chess and want to get your rating from 1400 to 1700. How many hours will that take? No really – add it up. How many hours, by your best estimate? Say you spend 10 hours improving your understanding of e4 lines. Another 10 sharpening up your repertoire as Black against e4. Another 20 working on endgame technique. 30 watching John Bartholomew’s games with his analysis. Another 30 watching Simon Williams’s games. Another 200 hours playing games and analyzing them with Stockfish. All this assuming you don’t have to repeat any material (which of course you will). So 300 hours. At ten hours a week, that will take half a year. Is it worth that price? Really ask that question. Maybe it is worth it so you can wipe that smug look off the face of that guy at the coffee shop. But be clear about it. Specifically tally up the cost, including the cost of not doing what else you could devote that time and energy to. And be honest about the payoff if you do reach your goal. Don’t leave either the cost or the benefit vague. Whatever your goal, be as exact as you can. Many people — lawyers, for example — have been clear about the costs of their endeavor but have left the payoff unclear. If law students think about the fact that the prize — if you win! — is a job working 70 hours a week which you might hate after a year, saddled with debt and having no other marketable skills, they might reconsider before taking the plunge.
Here’s another example of calculating costs. Suppose you consider moving to a new city. For example, let’s say Boston. What will it be like to live someplace cold? With six months of snow, no sunlight, deep depression from having no sunlight, and spending six months of the year surrounded by angry people who are just as miserable as you are? And having to dig your car out of the snow in order to go anywhere? And then someone takes your parking space that you dug out and you bust off their side view mirror with a quick stealthy kick (and then act all innocent when the neighbor asks about their mirror)? What then? Really think about how it will go from there. Be honest about what the price is and if you are willing to pay it, and if you will even be able to. In my case, despite my best efforts and intentions, I was often utterly unable to deal with situations that I thought I could handle going in. But if I’d done a rational assessment first, I could have saved myself a lot of time, money and pain. There are many things which I either did or didn’t do, partly because I didn’t take the time to really add up the costs and benefits (and risks). In some cases of things I wanted, the cost would have been manageable and one I was able and willing to pay. But because I left it vague it never happened.
This advice will be lost in time, like tears in rain. That’s why you need not only a system, as I say in another of these essays, but clear understanding. A specific, vivid image of what the costs will really be. “But won’t that take time? I mean, you want me to do all this adding and subtracting and budgeting and stuff, won’t that take time too?” Yes, it will. But a few hours thinking about and planning how you spend your time can, will, save you years. And there is no Coinstar for time, no way to get back those hours when you need them.