Recently I have made choices on how I spend my time and this has helped me decide what I say YES to and more importantly what I say NO to
Optimize for time over money
If I had to choose between taking muni or Lyft to work, I choose Lyft. Muni takes 45 minutes for a 4 mile trip to downtown San Francisco. Lyft costs more, but gets me there in 20 minutes. I pull up my laptop and write a blog post while I’m in Lyft.
Optimize for attention
I install a free AdBlocker, but I donate $15 for it in order to get rid of ads on webpages. I pay for ad free Hulu, ad free YouTube, ad free Crunchyroll.
I stop reading news and just read books and the Sunday newspaper delivered to my home.
I listen to Piano Dreamers radio when I write, read and not music with lyrics because I can only single task, no one can multitask!
Optimize for family
My family comes before almost everything except my own health. Spending time with my daughter, my wife & my parents always bubbles to the top.
Optimize for deeper meaningful relationship
I only have 2 really close friendships, that is all I have time for. And even that I don’t spend enough time nurturing.
I spend time mentoring several women at work and I try to spending meaningful time with them to help them with advice they are seeking.
Optimize for long term
My time and interaction has a long term focus. Long term is 10 years, 15 years. So I optimize for long term vs short wins.
Optimize for scope of impact
I spend time to have deeper impact on a single person, but I optimize for larger impact. For example, I may spend hours mentoring a person but I might distill that work into a blog like impactfulengineer.org to help hundreds later.
Optimize for no regret
I say YES to anything that I will regret when I am dying on my deathbed.