Pay Yourself First

February 18

Good morning, friend.

In the modern world, the brains that developed to keep us alive from predators are now dramatically sensitive to immediate threats. Years of evolution towards fending off saber-tooth tigers now have us sweating bullets over a mildly passive aggressive comment from a manager.

In our brief moments of rationality, it’s easy for us to budget our time: this amount for work, this amount for maintaining health, this amount for our friendships, this amount for ourselves. But in the heat of the moment, we’re rarely rational, especially when everyone else needs or wants something from us.

Here’s how we typically budget our productive time:

1. The things people will be mad about if you don’t do them (meetings, work deliverables, showing up to bridge club)

2. The things you need to do to maintain your environment (doing laundry, showering, meal prep)

3. The things you need to do to make progress towards your long term goals (personal projects, research, ‘doing the work’)

Here’s the secret: you can invert the process. Instead of letting the immediate threats nickel and dime you out of any time for yourself, you can pay yourself first—an idea from Robert Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad, Poor Dad stolen here not for money, but for time, like this:

1. Things you need to do to make progress towards your long term goals

2. Things you need to do to maintain your environment

3. Things people will mad about if you don’t do them

Inverting these things doesn’t mean abandoning your responsibilities—if anything, it heightens them. The secret power of doing this is that if you don’t work towards your long term goals, nothing will immediately happen. But if you fail in your responsibilities to someone else, they’ll be sure to let you know about it.

This approach also requires you to be actually rational about how much work you can reasonably get done for the long term—after all, you’ll need the time budget to make sure you don’t get fired.

Morning Reading is a daily email to help center yourself, reflect, and prepare for the day. It’s sent with love from your friend, Zach in Austin, Texas. He even drew the logo himself.

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