If your life sucks, this might be why -
Are you getting caught up in stupid details and missing the big picture?
Yesterday, I wrote What’s your time worth? “Can you keep the change and I can leave?”
What’s the point of that post?
You can often trade off a small amount of money to get out of short annoying situations.
I mentioned coffee as an example, but I don’t think I’ve actually done it in a coffeehouse since I don’t buy coffee to go. I have done it in 7-11, at bakeries, and similar places where there are staff who are doing things like cleaning who don’t speed the line up at all, who are generally very happy to help a patron of the place leave faster and get cash at the same time.
Inevitably, some small-minded clowns are like, “No booo you can’t do that!” They say “Go buy an espresso machine!”
Dude, we’re not talking about coffee. We’re talking about the fact that you can use a little creativity and a small amount of money to get out of bad situations and put your time to better use.
I’ve got more projects going on than anyone could possibly handle, and somehow, they’re all happening. What’s the least critical? The one where I’ve got the least promises made? It’s the orphanage I’m building in Ulaanbaatar.
My architect is a bit of a flake (when you read this, you’re brilliant but you’re totally a flake, c’mon now we all know this; PS cut it out please) and I don’t chase her down enough to keep things moving fast. Getting stuck in traffic, in stupid arguments, or in line all screw that up.
So I pay a few bucks to avoid it, and can spend more time on business, on reading, on writing, on building up the world, on building an orphanage, whatever.
It has nothing to do with coffee.
And this post? “Coffee’s got nothing to do with it”? The big point has nothing to do with yesterday’s post.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Your example wasn’t trading money for time; it was bribing a barista to make your coffee when they should be making coffee for people who were ahead of you in line. It was delaying others for selfish gain.
It was the advocacy of selfish, unsustainable, sociopathic, self-entitled behavior.
Maybe that’s not what you meant; maybe you’re just a shitty writer, not a shitty person. But you picked the example.
If you want to write about trading money for time, do so directly, or use examples that don’t involve the creation of negative externalities.
> Maybe that’s not what you meant; maybe you’re just a shitty writer, not a shitty person.
Ah, your tongue is like honeydrops across a fresh piece of melon, with maidens singing in the pastures as they tend to farm life.
No really, you’re still missing the point.
Post #1: You can pay to remove stupid little headaches without hurting anyone, or “negative externalities” in your fancy-pants parlance.
Post #2: Getting hung up on trivial details and missing the big point is small-minded clownery.
You’re just an asshole.
When you go to a coffee shop, the slow part is not the paying for the coffee, it’s the making of the coffee. If you bribe an employee to cut that line, you’re slowing down everybody else. In your example you were stealing time from other customers, without their permission, not simply trading money for time without external effect.
You wrote that example. You’re responsible for it.
(Were any of those words too big for you? I can use smaller words if your tiny little brain can’t handle them. I wouldn’t be surprised, given what a ridiculous fool you appear to be.)
It’s “small-minded clownery” to think you can write poorly and use examples that cause harm to others, and then blame people who say “hey, that’s shitty advice”.
Trading money for time is not a novel concept… but that’s not what you wrote about. You wrote about stealing time from others.
> You’re just an asshole. … It’s “small-minded clownery” to think you can write poorly and use examples that cause harm to others, and then blame people who say “hey, that’s shitty advice”.
But that’s not what you did. You were just throwing insults around without any intelligent discussion points, which you’re now starting to remedy.
If somebody repeatedly says that you’re advocating selfish, sociopathic behavior, it’s usually a good idea to think for a moment about whether you may have advocated selfish, sociopathic behavior.
In this case the problem wasn’t particularly subtle; so I didn’t feel it necessary to spell out what was wrong with your example.
You were plainly advocating stealing other people’s time for your private benefit; a sociopathic extension of a basic ‘money for time’ conversion.
I’m sorry that you are either:
a) a hack writer who, when faced with criticism, arrogantly assumes that the reader is simply too stupid to understand your “genius”.
or
b) a sociopathic asshole who is trying to deflect attention from your sociopathy by attacking me.
Either way, I’m truly sorry that your mother raised a shitty kid who turned into a shitty man.
I hope you get a better mother for Christmas. The one you had did a really fucking lousy job.
Merry Christmas, you arrogant fucking asshole.
Two things. 1) You can cut the paying line if you already have the product. Nobody’s going to make your coffee first but if you have it in your hand already they’ll let you leave the money on the counter. 2) Or maybe they will make your coffee before everyone else. Who cares? Wouldn’t the people wait in line still wait in line if five people were in front of them instead of four?
If your definition of not-a-sociopath is “content to queue up just because there’s a queue,” then you should consider becoming a sociopath.
I never waited in line to pay after putting gas in my car. Waiting on someone slow is stupid if if I don’t actually have to do it.
I walk to the front of the line, put the money on the table, say, “this is for pump 5″, walk back to my car and leave. The rest of the people are still standing in line to pay as I drive away.
No one got hurt. And it was good business for both of us.
You all can keep waiting in line. I’ll be getting shit done.
^ this.
Meh. I was just being mean for being mean’s sake. That was dumb. You trolled me, but I shouldn’t have trolled back.
That said, I stand by my original reaction that your example is fatally flawed; that the lesson in your example is not “trade money for time”, but rather it’s a more insidious “steal time from others”.
It’ll be interesting to see if you fix your example to something that doesn’t cause harm, or if you just write more blog entries about how your first entry was perfect and wonderful and people who complain are just clowns.
Actually, that’s not true. I don’t give a fuck what you spew over here.
I was really stupid for letting myself get trolled by you, and I try not to make the same mistake twice… so I’m not going to check back and see what you’ve called me this time, even if you send me more emails telling me that you’ve insulted me in new blog posts.
Then put on your big boy pants and stop fucking posting. You’re stealing time from those of us who have to sift through your ego stroking before we can read the constructive comments.
Don’t you get it? TIme is money. If you pay for the time, it’s effect is just a condition of the social conditioning we were simply conditioned to live by.
Go back to college maybe try the Jesuits they’ll sure teach you a lot about these kind of things.
There was a detail about paying someone who’s not serving customers or making coffee to make your coffee.
You’re paying someone to start making coffee for a little bit, so you’re not impinging on other people’s time, unless there’s a bottleneck of coffee machines. Not totally sure if there is, I’ll need to pay attention next time I’m getting coffee and there’s a line.
Sebastian,
Wouldn’t a respected strategist be already ahead enough of schedule to just wait those few minutes in line? A modest strategist would think of useful things to do standing in line: check and respond to emails or messages, review appointments, write down the cost of the coffee into my daily tracker of money spent, make small talk to cute girls (provided there are any of them), call my architect to speed up a project. That’s just from the top of my head. I’m sure a guy like you, who dedicates to planning and tracking can think of many more useful stuff to do. Here’s a challenge: you have a disease, a condition, that makes you completely immobile in the standing position for 10/20/45 minutes every day. How do you make good use of it? Cause that’s what this is all about.
There is no point in
a) borderline bribery to get what you want ahead of others;
b) making others look like chumps;
c) thinking your time is more important than others (you might spend it better, that doesn’t make it more important).
Bottom line: someone careful and conscious about his own time is also very conscious and respectful about the time of others.
Good question.
> Wouldn’t a respected strategist be already ahead enough of schedule to just wait those few minutes in line?
The answer is – no. Because if I was ahead of schedule, I’d redeploy that time to something else, and get back to running on the edge.
I’ve noticed there are a lot of commenters who don’t “get” you. It’s like they have a different sense of life entirely, which means they mis-parse everything you write and try to turn it into the worst possible version of what you wrote.
I do get you, however, and sense a kindred personality, so I’m getting hooked more and more hooked on your blog.
Btw, could we have a list of your projects? I bet it would be inspiring :)
Exactly.
There’s usually lots of hate on the comments here.
Sebastian has a really pissed off audience; at least, part of it.
> Sebastian has a really pissed off audience; at least, part of it.
My articles sometimes hit social media / social news sites like Hacker News, where they’re very polarizing. Ultra-happy/ultra-engaged readers and people who can’t stand that we think differently than their normal way.
The classic high-variance strategy in blog form.
Simple explanation to the negative comments. There’s a higher number of people that stand in line in life than try and understand where to finish up and save time WITHOUT it being at the expense of others. Those people who stand in line have to come from somewhere right?
Sometimes you don’t even have to shell out extra bucks to avoid that awful passive inactivity, the way around can be right there for free and you just need some willpower to sacrifice a little comfort.
Consider my illustration:
http://i.minus.com/jbbq3dhvxj3M8s.jpg
(//there seems to be no way to embed images here in comments, maybe it’s a good idea to add such plugin to wordpress?)
Moscow metro. Traveling stairs. One’s working and the other is not. The only excuse for not avoiding that stupid crowd is health reasons.
All those coffee shop example haters from the comments would probably be more pleased by this example.
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