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How Should I Spend My Time?

Memento mori, and remember how short life is. Why waste or squander any of your sweet and precious time?

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Of course there is no ultimately “good” or “bad” way to use your time — you must dictate for yourself how YOU desire to spend your time.

It seems this is the best strategy:

Seize every hour in the palm of your hands, and extract the maximum out of every minute, hour and moment of the day.


For myself, I know I will die, and because I don’t believe in a conscious afterlife, I live for now, and while I’m still breathing.

It seems the most meaningful use of my human metabolism is to empower my fellow human beings and future generations. And of course in order to do that, I must prioritize myself, my self-development, my learning, and my own intellectual and creative productivity.


How I like to spend my time

For the most part, it seems this is how I best prefer to spend my time:

  1. Sleeping enough (it doesn’t matter if I have 10 hours of free time if I don’t have any energy). Thus, free time is overrated if you’re not physically strong or vigorous enough to undertake creative activity.
  2. Going to the gym: I have fun lifting weights, challenging my body and mind, and I usually get good creative ideas at the gym or in the sauna. Also, getting my blood flowing seems to help my creative blood to flow as well.
  3. Writing: Writing as a way to distill my thoughts and ideas and share them with others on a wide base (through this blog).
  4. Videos: Making videos, sharing some ideas. I actually think I can speak better than talking (I have mild dyslexia at times). Thus, the benefit of speaking is to share more of my personality, share deeper thoughts, and to also explain certain concepts and ideas which I cannot render into writing.
  5. Photography: Photography as my preferred artistic outlet. As a way to analyze society (visual sociology), as a way to document personally meaningful moments (personal photography), and to show more love to strangers and others I don’t know (street photography).
  6. Spending time with friends and soul mates: No other good is greater than a true friend, or soul mate. The upside of 3 hour dinners, relaxed, no rush, and only talking about things which genuinely interest you and your friends.
  7. Reading: I enjoy cinema, films, and some shows — but for myself, I far prefer to read. Why? Perhaps because I prefer the fact I can control the tempo of my reading (I can control how fast or slow to read). Also all of the best ideas I’ve got were from books — sometimes and occasionally from documentaries or films/movies. But generally from other great thinkers I admire. Generally I prefer reading philosophy, entrepreneurship books (written by entrepreneurs who actually built their own companies), and poetry (Horace).
  8. Music and dancing: The synthesis of the two ultimate forms of self expression and human expression. For music I prefer hip-hop/rap (Kanye West, JAY Z, Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre) and other music which pumps me up.
  9. Going on pointless walks (flaneur style)— either to think, shoot photos, or to air out my mind. If humans are bipeds and we don’t need to walk anymore — for what use do we have a brain for (which much is used to coordinate our movement and balance)?
  10. Building things/companies/applications/ideas and turning them into reality. Currently building ARSBETA.COM, and trying to disrupt traditional notions of social media. The great joy of creating a platform or thing which can empower others, harness “cognitive surplus”, and build a true community of fellow learning and friendship.

How do you know if you’re spending your time well?

To know if you’re spending your time well:

  1. Are you engaged, active, happy, hyped up, and enthusiastic?
  2. Or are you bored, apathetic, and passive?

For myself, I prefer the first category of activities.

Generally speaking, whenever I’m bored, apathetic, and passive — I see these activities as a “waste of time”.

Value yourself, your time, and your life.

Your time is your life. You only got one life to live.

Even if you do believe in an afterlife, how do you know it will be a conscious and cognizant afterlife? Certainly an afterlife would NOT be identical to the current real world we know and experience first-hand.

So why squander this life, in hope of another, unknown life?


It is up to you

Everyone can and should dictate for themselves what is a “meaningful” use of time, and what is a “waste of time”. We shouldn’t superimpose our morals and ethics unto others. We should simply live according to what we believe in, and also not let anyone else tell us otherwise.

But generally, I would recommend these guidelines for a “good” use of time:

  1. Creating, making, or building something
  2. Movement, physical exercise, lifting heavy stuff
  3. Spending time with friends, family, loved ones
  4. Studying, researching, and learning about things which interest you
  5. Pursuing things in life you care about (disregarding what others think)
  6. An active and foolish life over a passive and “realistic” life.

And above all,

Stay bold, stay foolish, and hustle hard to make an impact on other individuals in society.

BE STRONG. ERIC