I think about my life in terms of transactions—not because I want to maximize gains, but because I want to minimize waste. The waste of throwing away my time and energy on things that don’t matter, instead of giving them generously to the people and ideas that do.

If I stay up late tonight, writing emails and doomscrolling after my partner falls asleep, maybe I’m making a deposit into my personal knowledge. But I’m also making a withdrawal from other accounts—my energy for tomorrow, my sleep, my patience for when things inevitably go wrong in the next 24 hours.

We act like we have an endless balance in these accounts. But we don’t. Right now, writing this post is a transaction I’ll never get back: a certain number of keystrokes, a certain number of seconds, gone. When I start to frame things this way, it’s confronting. It forces me to ask whether what I’m doing is worth the withdrawal.

This post is worth it to me. I have no buyer’s remorse about this transaction, because it’s something I need to say, something I can’t shake out of my head. But if I was using this time to scroll mindlessly, to argue with some Twitter bot, to read hot takes on why the new iPhone is supposedly the end of civilization—yeah, I’d regret that.

I didn’t always think like this. I used to throw away absurd amounts of time on things that meant nothing to me. Clicking through celebrity slideshows. Watching viral videos that just blended into the noise. Those transactions are gone, and there’s no refund.

That’s not to say I think every second has to be “productive.” I don’t buy into life hacks or the hustle gospel; I don’t believe everything we do needs a purpose stamped on it. Life is worth so much, and most of that worth can’t be measured in dollar signs or achievements. But some balances can’t be replenished, and once they’re empty, they’re empty for good.

You don’t get this shit back.