Yesterday I was having an interesting conversation with a few of my friends atop the rooftop of the Shangri-La hotel. As we were admiring the sunset, we discussed a whole range of topics from startup life to music to news to the weather to work and career, and it was a great way to pass the time on a Tuesday evening.

Passing the time is what we did.

In talking about startups, we agreed that if you don’t have a prototype garnering traction in the 3rd month of the business, you are wasting your time. We talked about Tim Ferriss’ books and his life in general, how he has been about shortcutting all sorts of things in life- everything from working to learning to sleep to sex (although that shouldn’t be shortcutted, I’d hope). Ferriss had figured out how to be super-efficient at all things possible, and relished the time it saved overall. After he launched his businesses that afforded him time he was able to travel the world and do whatever he wanted to do, whether that mean learning new languages or taking Argentinian tango lessons- in Argentina. The general conversation had to do with time. It’s such a simple thing that we don’t think too deeply on, but certainly deserves deliberate introspection on.

We all know this – time is what we don’t get back, and we are closer to the end as each second passes. The decisions we make impact how much time we have left, and sometimes we don’t even have the option of determining this when disease or freak accidents rear their ugly heads. But one thing I’ve noted very recently about time is just exactly how precious it is. The vast majority of us spend our time and effort doing things we really don’t want to do, but have either out of necessity or habit must do that very thing. Earlier this year, I took a job at DirecTV (now AT&T), out of necessity. My business was failing and I was about to be put out on the street. It wasn’t a bad job- it was in fact somewhat interesting, and I got a few perks from it, and the people were cool. It was monotonous at times, but I was able to apply some of my strategic thinking to the job as well. What I truly learned during this time was that it was my time that was being stolen from me, each day, 8 hours at a time each day. I’d steal back of course, sneaking off to conference rooms on other floors to work on my own stuff. I felt like Clark Kent, running off to private phone booths near my cube to take Skype calls with my business team. I’d come back to my cube, focus and get what should normally take 3 hours to do done in 1 hour with extreme effort. I’d bounce to go home the moment my superiors had left the building, which was typically around 3:15pm. I then focused the remainder of the day on real work.

Shady? Absolutely, 100%. Did I deliver at work? Absolutely. Did I save time? As much as I reasonably could get away with. As I slaved over powerpoint slides, scrum standup meetings, ad hoc management presentations, and the typical corporate politicking, I took every opportunity I could to steal my time back. I saw the team getting caught up in the minutiae of the projects and tasks at hand. One guy professed to me that he was on a war path to become a full time employee instead of a contractor at DirecTV. Another was so engrossed in her work that I could smell the fumes of the smoke coming from her head in her cube next to me from her perfectionist-driven stress. One crazy dude on a peripheral team deliberately setup weekly meetings and wasted the time of multiple people in various teams in the name of collecting “governance updates.” These meetings had no purpose but to prolong the perceived relevance of his employment so he could reap his pension benefits (and he wasn’t alone there). One guy kinda had the right idea as he was working on his cigar aficionado business in his free time – plotting his escape.

It was in this landscape that I realized how much time I was wasting. My brainpower, work ethic, experience, personality, and time were being squandered the majority of the day on useless projects that no one cared about. Again, I had to do it to make ends meet, but did I care to become an employee full time? HELL no. Did I have aspirations of becoming a director or VP at the company? HELL no. Climbing the corporate ladder would entail exponentially more stress and tension at the expense of more of my time, and all for a pittance of a salary sprinkled with menial perks.

So when we were talking on the rooftop of the Shangri La, an interesting thought came to me. The four of us were all MBAs, well-to-do, and driven in our careers. Each of us had a different path, and we all loved our vocations. The epiphany I had was that each of us dedicated time in our endeavors in varying ways. While it sounds elementary, it was a critical part of this epiphany.

Basically it’s this: for the vast majority of occupations- doctor, lawyer, engineer, musician, artist, agent, producer, marketer, etc. – all of these are vocations that require one to utilize their time in order to attain financial mobility. A trauma ward surgeon, while generating a decadent income, must be present in the ER when patients come through. A successful restaurant owner, while making decent cash flow, must be present a good majority of the time to ensure the place is running as it should. A 7-11 franchisee can entrust their managerial tasks to a GM (which would afford them time), but then this adds to the bottom line. An investment banker spends all of their time in their 20’s and 30’s but expects to recoup their time when they retire at the age of 35 from a significant payday.

So we are all fighting time doing whatever it is we do. But I’ve found (quite recently) that it’s really about how you pass the time, and the quality of that time therein. Wealth truly comes and goes, but you don’t get time back once it’s spent, and it is being spent each and every day.

I think I’ve spent enough time writing this blog entry.