Time Optimization and Prioritization

What's the marginal ROI for one additional minute of doing an activity? You can [and maybe should] delve into all of the scientific literature and personal data that you might have to come up with your own best estimate of the marginal impact on additional minutes of quality life that each one of an additional minutes worth of these activities adds to the expectations of life:

  • What's the loss in lifespan of napping an additional minute, if one has already has had a good night's rest of 8-9 hrs? Probably around one minute, ie two minutes if one includes the time spent napping after one is well-rested. And if one can't be well-rested after 8-9 hours of sleep, then there's a bigger sleep hygiene problem to address.

  • How much sooner will a person die if he eat's a small dish of ice cream or a sugary breakfast cereal/energy bar for breakfast? Every minute spent swallowing sweet, tasty breakfast items reduces life span by at least 3 minutes or 4 minutes lost total ... getting sugared up for the day every morning for 15 minutes reduces lifespan by an hour.

  • How much longer will a person live if his breakfast consists of two tablespoons of homemade L reuteri probiotic greek yogurt washed down with a glass of probiotic L.reuteri whey? Make sure that the L. reuteri yogurt has the correct probiotic profile and making the inoculation of your gut with these bacteria for 15 minutes every morning will increase your healthy lifespan by an hour.

  • How much does a marginal increase in exercise [if one is not already exercising a sufficient amount] help? This MARGINAL increase in exercise is something small small -- it might be doing as many pull-ups as on can for one EXTRA minute, doing one EXTRA minute of yardwork or housecleaning, walking at the rapidest sustainable pace for one ADDITIONAL minute. Each additional minute of exercise produces 3-6 additional minutes of high quality life -- as we might expect, doing pullups is the 6-minute adder, whereas walking briskly is the 3 minute adder, but all exercise is good. Probably. As with anorexia, MOST people don't have to worry about exercising too much, but SOME do.

  • How much does diligent, disciplined daily gratitude journalling and expressing joy for ordinary things for one additional minute/day help? The benefits are gigantic for those not doing this at all -- but even for those spending a full 30/day minutes doing this, will probably extend and enhance their lives by at least 1 hour/day ... many find the DISCIPLINE of daily gratitude journalling to be completely transformative.

  • How much much does doing one extra minute/day of open source development or performing one MINOR random act of kindness, eg smiling, saying hello, holding a door open, for someone who will never know that you did it or who you are, add to your healthy lifespan probably adds 3 minutes, ie a net gain of 2 minutes for every minute invested.

  • Gobbling down an exceptionally tasty snack of chips, pizza, or food at a restaurant probably decreases your life span by four minutes for every additional minutes spent swallowing something tasty that you did not need ... in other words this is a net five minute loss for every minute spend consuming. This changes SIGNIFICANTLY if we factor in the social camaraderie aspects, eg enjoying a birthday cake and a celebration at a restaurant is obviously life enriching ... UNLESS you are celebrating birthday's and special occasions EVERY SINGLE day ... and even worse, if you are spending money that you should be investing on going out to eat and special vacations. AFFLUENZA KILLS ... but first it turns productive people into needy addicts.

Many, if not most, things about affluent lifestyles have a strongly NEGATIVE marginal ROI and accelerate one's demise over and above the time spent doing the thing or working to pay for it and thus NEVER EVER should be something that one does. This is why, for many people, the best thing that they can do for themselves is to FAST ... whether it be eating, material possessions, news consumption, social media screen time or anything that affluenza suggests, ie what kinds of things are advertised to captive Super Bowl audiences?

Obviously, things like prioritization and time management are important. Moreover, moderation is key -- one may achieve ridiculous benefits in one's life and spiritual quest by spending 30 minutes/day gratitude journalling, whereas spending all day or even multiple hours/day gratitude journalling probably results in one becoming detached not only from people, but Reality. The same would be true of exercise and spending the entire day training, ie that's fine and necessary to be a world champion elite athlete, but for most people that kind of excessive amount of time devoted to exercise and fitness actually builds distance from other humans and from Reality ... so balance and moderation are key.

The kinds of question that this prompts is What can I spend 30 minutes on that will extend/enhance my life by 2 hours, offering a 90-minute net gain, even if I throw away the 30 spent doing an activity.