Imagine your finances are in shambles, but you don't want them to be. You're always wondering where all your money is going. You're stressed, worried about whether you can pay your bills, and you've almost given up on the idea of retiring someday. You've got a spreadsheet, a messy box of receipts, and a line you keep repeating to yourself: "I never have any money to do anything I want to do."

What do you think would happen if you got a little hard on yourself? What if you finally started consistently using a good financial tracking app? You hook everything up and set a budget that fits your income. Now imagine you're two or three years in. You've gone through the phase of discovering where you were being wasteful. You've made the hard choices after seeing how you spend compared with the financial life you actually want. The discipline was hard at first, but it's easier now, and consistency helps you keep the life you wanted. It takes a little consistent work, but you have a lot more peace.

Imagine you're out of shape, but you don't want to be. You keep getting those bursts of passion that convince you "this time will be different!" It never is. You avoid the scale, but you can't avoid every mirror in the house. You still pay for a gym membership you won't cancel because of what canceling would say about you, even though you haven't been since last January.

What do you think would happen if you got a little hard on yourself? What if you finally started consistently using a good nutrition tracking app and a good workout app? You set your workouts and your calorie and macro targets. Now imagine you're two or three years in. You've found what was causing the constant caloric surplus. You've made the hard choices after seeing how you actually eat and train compared with the health and body you want. The discipline was hard at first, but it's easier now, and consistency helps you keep the life you wanted. It takes a little consistent work, but you have a lot more peace.

You probably know where I'm going with this.

Imagine you never have enough time. You and your spouse haven't had time alone together in longer than you can remember. You get a burst of passion to start on that great idea of yours, and a couple of months later you wonder why nothing has happened. If you're honest, you haven't touched it since that one burst.

What do you think would happen if you got a little hard on yourself? What if you finally started consistently using a good time tracking app? Could you even design the life you want to live and then use an app to consistently keep yourself on track? What if you could? And what if it was easy to see what is having you feeling so stretched and constantly complaining that you never have any time? Imagine you're two or three years in now. You've gone through the phase of seeing how you spend your time compared with what you actually value. You've designed the life you want and you've been living it. The discipline was hard at first, but it's easier now, and consistency helps you keep the life you wanted. It takes a little consistent work, but you have a lot more peace.

Why? What happened? Are these apps magic? Is it even the apps? I'd say they are a major contributor. But why?

Someone once observed that "that which gets measured gets modified." A natural byproduct of measuring something is that you start modifying that thing that you're measuring. The apps make it easy to measure.

You start measuring something you care about, and it stays front of mind. Do that consistently and it becomes second nature. You're naturally more mindful. Instead of spending $300 a month eating out, you spend $200. Keep that up and it has real impact. Instead of 2,000 calories a day you eat 1,850, and over time that adds up.

Time works the same way. Instead of doing a little work on your side project here and there, you set a goal of six hours a week and keep hitting it. That adds up too. You start actually living the life you want, with everything you want out of it.

Most of us agree it's good to track our finances. People in fitness know it's good to track workouts and nutrition. Right now, tracking your time seems foreign, even ridiculous, to most people. But should it? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Maybe Shane Parrish was on to something when he said, "We protect money because it's visible and throw away time because it's not. If you burn money, people call you crazy. If you burn time, they call you busy. We treat money as valuable because it's quantifiable and time as disposable because it's not."

Temporal changes that. Temporal makes your time quantifiable and helps you measure how you spend it. Once you can see it, you'll start to change it.

When it comes to the way you spend your life, a burst of passion only gets you so far before life buries you in distractions, and by the time you notice, you've been sliding backward, off track, for months. You find yourself right back in the same position where your relationships are suffering and making progress toward your goals has stalled.

The discipline to use Temporal may be hard at first, but it gets easier, and consistency will help you keep living the life you want to be living. It takes a little consistent work, but you'll end up having a lot more peace.

Notes on life and time

What If This Life Is the Paradise We Were Promised