Time and attention are flawless guides to what a person values

I found myself feeling resentful earlier this week about the amount of time I was “wasting” at work one day. I had something more important which I was eager to do. I don’t work nearly as many hours now as I used to, but I felt impatient with work this week anyway.

As I grumbled inwardly, I started thinking about how much I’d worked in the past at other pursuits.

When I owned a couple of small start-up newspapers, I routinely worked between 100 and 110 hours a week. I was exhausted all the time, but I didn’t mind the effort. I loved what I was doing. I was passionate about it.

When I was a political consultant, there were weeks when I worked 80 or 90 hours, especially as an election approached. Other times during a year, I might work only a few hours a week. It varied. I was happy with that, too. I controlled my time — and I loved what I was doing.

What dominates my time now? Writing, photography, thinking — all about things which matter to me. My income tells you nothing about what I care about, but my use of time tells you everything. I’ve realized very clearly this week that my use of time — and where I put my attention — have always been a proxy for what I loved and what I was passionate about.

That’s true for you, too. And for everyone else.

If you say you care about something, but you don’t give it time or attention, you’re lying to yourself or you’re lying to someone else. Your use of time tells the truth about what you really care about, regardless what you claim.

Every time I’ve been in love with a woman, she’s received a tremendous amount of my time and attention. It didn’t even have to be an objectively valuable use of my time for it to matter. We might have watched ridiculously silly movies. We might have spent time on the phone far past the point of having anything to say. Or we might have talked about ideas of great importance to me. It didn’t matter too much.

No matter what it was, if the two of us chose to give time and attention to each other, we were showing — in the most clear way possible — that each of us considered the other person worthy of giving these bits and pieces of our lives to.

I can also remember times in relationships when I didn’t make someone a priority. I had other things that had to be done. There were meetings. There was work of various sorts. There were dozens of other things that were more pressing.

I’m not saying those other things weren’t really important to me. What I’m saying is that those were times when my use of time showed quite clearly that pretty much every other priority in the world came before that woman. And those were the relationships that were already dead. I just hadn’t admitted it yet.

In a typical year, we have 8,760 hours. We have to spend some of them sleeping. Others are spent on eating and grooming and similar necessities. But no matter how we decide to use the remaining hours, we can’t create more of them.

And if you look at how I fill those remaining hours, you will know what I care about. You’ll know whether I love someone. You’ll know what I’m passionate about. And you’ll even be able to tell if I have no passions and loves worth giving my time to. If you ever hear someone who wants to “kill time” — and has to look for brain-numbing things to fill the hours — you can be pretty sure that person has run out of things to care deeply about.

If I sell my time to someone, it means that I either care about the work or I need the money. If I offer my time to you — wanting nothing but your time and attention in return — that means you’re a priority for me. But if I prioritize everything else before you, that tells you that you don’t really matter to me.

Most of us know this instinctively, but we don’t necessarily think about it. Sometimes it’s wise to evaluate our use of time consciously, though. And it’s wise to evaluate the time and attention which we get from others.

You’re not entitled to my time if I don’t want to give it to you. And I’m not entitled to your time if I’m not among your priorities, either. But knowing the truth about where we stand is important.

One of the greatest experiences of life is when two people mutually make the other a priority. It’s like a gift of some sort of magic. And this magical clock — which tracks our use of time and attention — tells the absolute truth about what we really care about, whether we like what it says or not.