

Investing Time vs. Spending Time - bradly
http://tynan.com/investingtime

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taylan
I'm having hard time wrapping my head around the time-money analogy here. In
the case of money, by investing it or delaying spending, you can have more of
it in future. In the case of time this does not hold, because time is
essentially a shrinking resource. You can't have more time in future by
delaying spending or 'investing' it in the manner OP suggests.

Return on time, (ROT?), is always something other than time and thus measures
of it are highly subjective. In the end, what you are spending is your life
and although there might be preferable ways of doing it, I'd imagine that
being the achievers they are, HN members usually err on the side of investing
it. Actually PG's essay offers a nice exposition of spending time (having fun)
vs investing it vs fake work:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html)

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webmaven
Seems to me you can spend time now to save more time later. That isn't the
only reason that time is 'invested', but neither are future financial returns
the only reason people invest money.

And that's leaving aside entirely the idea that time == money (ie. you can
often substitute one for the other, or invest one to later gain the other).

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suyash
Good way to put your thoughts across. I like the analogy and comparison of
time with money. I feel time is sometimes more valuable of a resource than
money and need to be invested wisely. What most people do is they spend time
(also for money) in short term gains vs focussing and investing on long term
gains (same goes for money).

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dvanduzer
At the end, his example for rebalancing our time portfolio: Despite the many
positive outcomes of practicing pickup artistry, he'll actually sometimes
recommend giving it up if it hasn't produced the long term returns you
expected!

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aytekin
This applies to startups as well. You have a very limited man-hours. How you
spend it matters a lot. Do you improve the product a little bit every day?

Investing time understanding users or improving your tools makes a big
difference in the long term. When you understand your users you can work on
the right features. When you sharpen your tools you spend less time wasting
time with repeat tasks. For example, how long it takes to release a new
version of your product matters a lot. Automated testing for most common
problems makes you move faster.

In general, the best way to invest your time is to automate repetitive tasks.

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JackMorgan
Interesting analogy, check out my post here talking also about time as an
investment as pertains to overtime at work. [http://deliberate-
software.com/501-developer/](http://deliberate-software.com/501-developer/)

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pge
See also PG's essay on a similar theme:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html)

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tynan
Hey, thanks a lot for linking this-- very much appreciated.

