Time is life. Life is short.

Hello hello! 👋

It has been quite a while. For the past 2 months, it has been quite intense at work. Nevertheless, I do enjoy what I have been doing. I wish I could share more, but unfortunately, I can’t. 😆 Today’s newsletter might be a bit more generic than usual—but it might take more time to think about and digest. My recent interactions with my mentees, as well as other people around me, kind of made me think about a few things—life, that is.

What is Life?

Life is mostly based on perspectives and circumstances. A perspective based on circumstance could differ with time, location and even up to the individual. For example, someone who is in their 40s in the 2020s might have a very different perspective from someone who is in their teens in the same time. Similarly, someone who is in their teens in the 2020s could differ from someone who’s also in their teens based in another location. These things can also be broken down further into more granular details. Like location could be broken down into community and family.

On a personal level, some want to seek and give meaning to their lives, others may see that on the other end of the spectrum and not do anything—and that’s being human. That’s also why there’s so many conflicting views across the world. However, these perspectives change through time. We’ve went from inventing plastic bags to save trees, and now, we’re back to using paper bags calling it “sustainable”. The food pyramid was also one of the things that changed due to the fact that it harmed more people than helped. These extremities of the human society, are kind of what drives change, but yet at the same time, is its own antithesis of being. Personally, I crave knowledge—I might not be right, but I always question the balance of things. And that’s part of life.

Now, to me, life is what you make of it. You could give it a purpose, or let it be without meaning. You don’t have to be the next Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. What you do, that positively impact the people around you, could just be it. The way I think about my life is to be someone that leaves the world better than I found it. And in that way, I find the things that I want to do, for the people that I care about, and at the same time, make the world a better place.

Time

Time, in my opinion, is what we perceive. Again, the perspective of how long an event or interval lasts are based on circumstances, and is influenced by several factors, ranging from attention to emotions, memories, as well as context.

If you’re busy or enjoying something that you’re doing, time can feel like it passes quickly. However, if you’re dreading what you’re doing, it might seem that time is always passing so slowly. In our world, time is perceived to be running in parallel with our lives. We get born, we grow old, and we die—and we’re lucky if we get to do that till a ripe old age.

We measure time through seconds, minutes, months, years, decades and so on. However, most people don’t see that time is life. What do I mean by that? Every second of your life is running in parallel with time. Therefore, to me, time is life. This perspective on my end brings a lot of weight to the decisions that I make because of the way I think—that time is life. For example, I had someone told me before that she walked 30 minutes to save $1. So I asked her, “Does it mean an hour of your life is worth only $2?” (without being condescending of course) Immediately, she had a mindset shift that her choice of walking to save a dollar doesn’t make sense. Again, that’s why I covered in my previous post that “people trade money for time differently”, and that “you can always make more money, but you can't buy more time.”

Remember: “The most valuable asset you can never own is your time” And if “time is money” and “time is life”, “life is money” too. Anything that you pay for with your time, you pay with a portion of your life.

Choices

Singapore is known to be a place that has “no freedom”. That’s true to a certain extent. As mentioned before, there are caveats with every choice that is made. The freedom of choice, as seen in the United States, also means that anyone is free to hate on anyone. In Singapore, you are not allowed to do that—the result of this is not racial tolerance—It’s racial HARMONY. We live in harmony, with no threat of guns and drugs, and also a country that is safe for you to head out at 3am in the morning for supper without needing to worry too much. Someone even left his laptop laying around at Starbucks while he went elsewhere (I DON’T RECOMMEND THIS THOUGH. PLEASE DON’T DO THIS 😱).

As with your personal choices. You can choose to have balanced and healthy meals, and the caveat—you might not really get to enjoy delicious food. However, the person who enjoys delicious food all the time, the caveat of their choice would be that they might have health problems later in life.

Based on people’s life (perspectives and circumstance), they make choices (including micro-decisions). My goal here is to try to make you a little more aware of your daily choices, and bringing your subconscious decision making a little more conscious. If you’re a UX designer, this is how I would recommend for you to have more empathy for others—whenever you make a decision, these considerations should pop in your head.

Don’t Waste Life

Now, I want to see if I can help put things in perspective. The amount of time we spend doing anything, we pay it with our lives. Sounds heavy? Indeed it is.

That queue you decide to join for a “free” item? You’re paying with your life. Just scrolling through Instagram or TikTok while waiting for the bus? You’re paying with your life too. We’ve heard people say this when giving advice to others who might be not doing anything, but just getting drunk and high on drugs “Don’t waste your life away…” We say that because every little thing that we do, the time that we spent, we exchange it with a portion of our lives that we can never get back.

When choosing what we want to do with our time, we essentially pay it with a portion of our lives. I’m not saying that you need to be productive 24/7 or be working all the time. You can absolutely scroll through Instagram or TikTok while waiting for a bus to just chill and relax. However, this should help put things in perspective that every choice you make, you are aware of exchanging your life with it. For example, if you choose to eat unhealthily and not exercise, you might have to pay that back with your life twice-fold, one is when you’re eating, the other is when your health deteriorates.

At this point, I guess whatever you have read might be a bit heavy for you. But I do hope that you take the best out of this message. Don’t waste time, because time is life, and life is short. The important thing is to learn to balance it out so that you don’t over work, or waste your life away. If anything, I leave you with one of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite old movies I really enjoyed when I was younger (which I accidentally stumbled upon while browsing through channels on TV).

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Reflect: I am still trying different ways to make my life more effective and try as many things as possible. Like how we have design rationales, we must try to do that when we live our lives. What we choose to do has a negative impact just because it’s a small habit that we have. However, if we put a bit more weight to our decisions, we might be a bit more conscious with how we think and choose—and that could be helpful in our lives, career, finance and more.

Mentor’s Notes

The reason why I wanted to cover this was because I have seen people trying very hard but keep hitting a “ceiling” or “barrier”, and the only thing that is stopping them is their mindset. Mindset is a powerful tool when used correctly. It can change behaviour, give you a purpose, and shape the way you think and move ahead in life. It can also help you be more aware and empathise with others as you interact with them. Also, everything we do, we pay with bits of our lives.

At the same time, if you’ve heard of the rich and poor mindset, there was a study that you can watch here. People call it manifesting, but I honestly believe that being a little more aware of how you think and behave can shift a mindset, and in effect, change your life.

Anyway, thank you for reading!

I wanted to share something else with you. I will be speaking at this year’s Be More Festival. I’ll be speaking alongside 2 design leaders about Design Leadership and more. If you’re keen, you can get your tickets here or check the session here.

Until next time!

P.S. Yes, as always, please share it with your friends if you think it’s useful.