What would you do with $86,400 a day?

(idea) by KernelPanic (6.4 y) (print) ? (I like it!) 5 C!s Tue Jun 05 2001 at 19:53:34

This is one of those motivational type stories I heard on the radio years ago and thought it'd make a good node.
Let's say that you have a bank account which, don't worry how, gets an $86,400 deposit every day. The money is yours to do anything with, however:

At midnight the balance is reset to $86,400. If the balance is $85,000 at 12:00am, it will mystically become $86,400 again.
You cannot save money from the account. Any unspent money is gone.

What would you do with it? Stop and think about it for a moment.

Most everyone on the show said they'd try to spend the whole account everyday. If they couldn't blow it all on themselves, they'd spend the rest on the needy or people they care about. That's nice.

So here's the twist: There are 86,400 seconds in a day. You cannot save them, and when they pass they are gone forever. How well are you spending them?

The end. I thought the comparison between money and time was interesting, I don't know many people who try to spend every last second to the best that they can. I sure know I can't (or just don't). It was also neat how the folks on the radio could instantly come up with ways to spend money but not time.

And on that note, I think I'll go draw for a while.

(person) by asqui (1.5 y) (print) ? (I like it!) Thu Jun 07 2001 at 23:57:43

I cannot help but be reminded of one very useful piece of advice my (now former) Physics teacher recently dispensed to myself and classmates:

"In life you will soon discover, that money comes and money goes, but time... time only ever goes."

I have just (well almost) finished my high-school career once and for all. Only a couple of weeks of exams remain, and then I shall be free.

This Physics teacher has a lot in common with my old Latin teacher, who taught me Latin for the scholastic year of 1996. But of course there are also many large differences between them. I shall node about this particular Latin teacher at great lengh at some point in the future, as I have much to say...

I must admit that whether or not I realised it at the time, I am very glad to have had them both teach me. There are teachers who teach a subject intently and very strictly, and then there are teachers who teach life, and their subject on the side. Life teachers are definitely more useful in both the very short and very long term.

printable version
chaos

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