Buying Time

Buying Time

by Jack Butcher

"When you get the money, the only thing you want to buy is time." – mike

How we spend time is how we earn time.

That statement seems counterintuitive on the surface, but let me explain:

If time is the only thing we have for sale, we are always in debt.

The only way to escape this paradigm is to make something that keeps working after we stop working:

Music, art, software, devices, services, books, movies, products — the list is quite literally endless. 

Build once, sell twice.

The extent to which anything keeps working after you stop working determines how much time you earn from making it.

Buying Time by Visualize Value

Find Your Place
Find Your Place
Leverage is as much about where you are standing as how much force you are applying.
Planting Seeds by Visualize Value
Planting Seeds

If you are building something, it is far more useful to focus on the work you are doing to produce the result than the result itself.

The DICE Framework by Visualize Value
Constraining your Curiosity

The constraint we apply to package our idea determines their reach & resonance. "Make 1 decision to eliminate 1,000 decisions."

Labor vs. Vision
Labor vs. Vision
Labor is generally a more interchangeable resource than vision.
Inspiration
Inspiration

To help understand this idea, consider the contrast between the two concepts ancient Greeks used to think about time.

Up Only
Up Only

It should be relatively simple to identify when we aren't accumulating net new experience, but in practice, it doesn't seem to be.

Descriptions
Descriptions

Language is an incredible tool. It makes it possible for us to externalize what we think and communicate it to others.