How To Be Selfish With Your Time, Without Being An Asshole

"I live for myself and I answer to nobody"

-Steve McQueen

A common aphorism expressed in times of turmoil is “life is too short.” Could there be a more potent truism? In the grand scheme of things, we inhabit a small iota of the universe and it is unlikely any of us will impact the future world in any capacity. At the time of writing this article, I am 10 days shy of being 27 years old, still quite the provincial young man, and with Mother Earth being an estimated 4.54 billion years old, my cumulative existent is but a blimp on the map of time.

Armed with this information, why would we spend any moment of our lives doing something we don’t wish to do? A life attempting to impress others is unfulfilling and shallow. Maybe you’re a parent or have a spouse you must provide for and can’t sacrifice the opportunities that provide for said familial units, but this is a choice in its own. For the rest of us living a bare existence, it is our duty to find fulfillment and purpose within the confines of time we are given. If you knew life was going to end in 1 year, how would we change our current trajectory? The truth is, we may not even have that amount of time allotted to us. Time is irrevocable and constantly fleeting. If we do not manage how we spend it, we will end up living a life we do not see as ideal and go to the grave wishing we didn’t waste our gift of existence.

This is the key to being selfish and acting in your own best interest. You have a finite amount of time and energy to expend in life, and spending these valuable resources on things you do not value is wasting them. We all must learn to stop giving into the demands of the world as if they are required. There is no life contract that we signed at birth with a clause stating we must be kind, let others waste our time, or lead a boring existence. We are the proprietors of our own lives and we have the choice to live a fulfilling life, or a life of fulfilling others.

This does not mean we become anti-social individuals who hurt others and deceive them in order to get ahead and safeguard or time gratuitously. That would only create enemies and raise resentment from people, of whom we must exist with, but rather we learn to stop giving our time away to things we do not find worthy of it. Learning to say no is a powerful skill to possess.

A friend invites you to a party but you want to work on your business (or hell, get drunk and play video games until 2 am). Politely decline and say you can’t wait to see them some other time. Your boss asks you to stay an extra two hours but you really just want to go home and watch Netflix. Be honest (or politely lie) to them that you are unable to due to obligations after work. No amount of scorn is needed within being selfish. We are not acting in self interest to harm others, but to enhance our own lives. These people may even appreciate your honesty and see you as a scarce item that they have limited access to; when you don’t give out your presence for free, you increase its worth. Where is the value in someone you can see and talk to at all hours of the day?

In Western society, we value a phenomenon known as “grind culture.” A virtue signaling way of showing that you work harder than others and are mentally and physically spent. It seems rather clever and prestigious to boast about the long hours you put in at work, but the cost is tantamount to defeat. You will never get anywhere in life renting out your time and never allowing periods of recharge and doing what you actually want to do. Maybe this is necessary in situations of working for yourself, but look at the lives of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to see the results of putting work beyond anything else. These guys are diabolically smart and absurdly rich, but they can’t keep a woman in their lives and if we’re being frank, don’t seem too happy. We have to learn to balance our work life with our real life, as the two simply cannot coexist at all times. If you believe that spending long hours on the grind is how you want to spend your time, then the choice is quite easy to make.

There is a quote attributed to John Lennon — I question its true origin but it is simply too good to ignore: “Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” I feel like this sums up how time should be spent. Where I consider reading as one of the most enjoyable activities, others see me as wasting time looking into white pages. Where I see video games as largely unproductive time wasters, others see as a way to unwind, or even a passion. What others value is not a proxy to reference against your own value of time; we must spend time how we wish lest we want others spend it for us. A great way of prioritizing how to manage your time is to figure out the biggest time wasting activities that you simply can’t wait to trim and work back to the thing that you believe worthy of your time and that you want to do as much as possible.

The harsh truth is all of us must spend time doing things we dislike, work a job we can’t stand, or converse with folks we wish lived on another planet. This does not mean we give into these societal pressures and let them eat up our precious time, but that we scheme of ways we can cut out the excess and dodge the influence of others and their control of our time. Work that job you hate until you find one you can’t stay away from; get so good at conversing with others that you know exactly how to make a clean break and exit; after spending time on necessary but grueling activities, reward yourself by getting back to that thing you love.

Time is not something that should be wasted and being selfish with it is the only logical course of action to ensure it remains yours.