The chip bag of time

What we can learn from the bottom of the chip bag

Photo by Jeff Siepman on Unsplash

I need to go now. I’ve got a video to edit.

Butter chicken, palak paneer, and garlic naan were spread across the table that Friday night. Jokes were abound in between sips of mango lassi. We were filling ourselves up before we would play a casual round of table tennis that we will end up taking too seriously. It was a relaxing evening, although my mind was bouncing off the walls.

My laptop is here. Should I pull it out right now while we’re waiting for dessert? Or should I get on it later during the table tennis match?

I chucked both my backpack and my thoughts away. This was our last dinner together. Two dear friends in the group are moving to Spain. I want to savor this moment like I would a bag of Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion chips. But an assortment of attention-grabbing tasks - socializing, work, my passion projects - are eating away at my chip bag of time. And there was one Friday night chip left.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to allocate my time, which is becoming more and more scarce by the second – pun intended. An innate part of me wants to work hard. I need to burn as much fuel as possible in my twenties so that my career trajectory curves steeper and steeper. I want to excel at my day job, run a YouTube channel, write for this Substack (hello!). Perhaps contrastingly, I also want to chill and hang out with my friends.

Everything was possible during the pandemic years, when my social life was nonexistent. A chip for everything and everything in... a chip’s place? That doesn’t sound right, but you get the point. This year, my friends came pounding at my door. Life is abuzz again. And I want to be present for it.

I could ignore my friends and go back into living in my personal bubble. Spend my free time making videos. They won’t edit themselves! I could do all of that from my cozy one-bedroom flat. It’s comfortable.

But then the voice of Professor Scott Galloway enters my head. (Literally. I listen to his podcasts five days a week). His words:

If you’re a young person, you should be outside, at the office, at cafes [...] gyms, clubs, bars, friends’ living rooms, making connections, risking awkwardness & rejection, forming friendships & work relationships and finding love IRL.

He’s right. Friends always make for a heck of a good time. Sure, by the next day, my introverted soul is shriveling and I’m slightly sleep deprived. But I’m so happy that I don’t care.

Just like the best-flavored chips inside a 7.75-oz bag, time with people is scarce. Friends move, new family members or interests enwrap their time. I really only have them for the moment.

I laid my burgundy planner in front of me. Something’s got to give. My weekly tasks include writing Substack drafts, filming my art process, editing videos for YouTube… I zeroed in on ‘editing videos’ almost instantly. I’ve dreaded this troublesome task so much in the past few months because it was such a time suck. It made my creation process feel not fun.

Is this the point when I outsource a job? I’ve never done that before. I can’t justify spending money on a channel that isn’t paying for itself yet. Plus, could I give an internet stranger creative control over my passion project?

But it’s the logical thing to do. I just needed to upload the footage onto Google Drive and find a freelancer. Even if I have to give feedback, it’ll take less time than actually editing. So I created a Fiverr account and hired someone.

And for $70, I bought myself another Friday evening of table tennis. The video will get done. And I can be present with my friends, stuffing my stomach and my soul without being haunted by my passion projects. Outsourcing a task unlocked the opportunity to form deeper friendships and make deeper connections.

This time, it’s made possible via $70 video edits. In the future, some other time bottleneck will come up. I’ll work it out when it comes. But for now, when the next group dinner comes around, I will sip that mango lassi distraction-free.

Thanks to the WOP community -

Writing to Lampposts

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Data with Intent

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Afterimage

, and

Diffuse Attention

for lending your thoughts on this essay. It’s so much better now because of you.