Summary

Being selfish with your time will help you accomplish the things you value most while helping you remain at peace and strengthen meaningful, fulfilling relationships. Out of the Oxford Dictionary:

Selfish: „caring only about what you want or need without any thought for the needs or wishes of other people“

Body

On one hand, being selfish is a behaviour that society overall deems undesireable, as it is in itself truly egoistic. This of course means that others have a hard time profiting of you and your efforts. Contrarily, most people would like you to remain in a state of constant compromising and benevolence, where their needs are catered to. On the other hand, TRP terminiology oftetimes equates men, who give out their time carelessly, to sluts, who do the same with their sexual presence. The following is my take on how to become more observant and careful with your time and to whome you allocate it.

As time is a man’s most valuable asset, for it is not replenishable, one has to be somewhat selfish with his time, in order to properly take care of and follow his greater misson and shot-term goals. Compromising in itself entails that you compromise yourself. In reality, you cut back on what you, the most important person in your life, has planned for a particular day, to join the plan of others, compromsing your frame in favor of theirs.

Throughout the day, acquaintances of diverse social castes get at you from all angles, demanding a piece of you, your current or future time and often, your unshared attention. While such spontaneus breaks in what you want to accomplish are bad enough, there is something far worse, that most people nowadays are not fit to handle properly:

Social plan making.

Take for example a mid-day assesment of a typical workday:

What I still want to do with my time today: Finish work at 5pm. Eat last healthy meal at 6pm. Go running at 7:30pm. Be at home reading Marcus Aurelius at 8:30pm.

What other people want me to do with my time: „You have to come join us tonight for a couple of beers at the bar. We’ll meet at around 8:30pm. “

For most people, saying no to an invitation is unusual and hard, even it would be for the better to do so. There is a lot of social pressure around not being rude or leaving someone hanging so a lot of guys just accept and go with it. Once you realize that the plans you agreed to don’t fit your schedule or your own plans in general, you either cancel the appointment and risk coming of as a total douche, or you begrudgingly push through with it, leaving stuff you really wanted to do undone in the process.

There is no need to do any of that though, as you can quite easily become a master in social plan making in only a couple of days. This has greatly benefited my life and I am a much more wholesome person since I started being a lot more selfish with my time.

Step 1 – Before making plans (short & long term strategy)

The first step is growing cautious of with whom and for what you arrange something. There should be a rough matrix in your mind, telling you what degree of compromise can be utilized to make an arrangement with a certain person. For example, if you’re dealing with very close friends, you might be willing to compromise to a larger extent (e.g. skipping a cardio session or eating out of line, going to bed later than usual, shortening time you allocated elsewhere) in order to hang out with them.

Then again, if someone you don’t really value much as a person asks you to do something with them, that arrangement would need to be constructed solely on your terms, if at all. Imagine the drivilling idiot coworker Bob, whom you can barely stand, inviting you out to eat some not particularly healthy food - not only would you compromise your time, you’d also compromise your nutrition and long term goals. While you might do that for a close friend, you should absolutely not do that for Bob.

The action to take is to either negotiate the terms of an agreement to what fits your needs or to respectfully decline the Invitation. I like to let people know that I appreciate them taking interest in doing something with me and that the plans don’t really fit my schedule at this time. Only if you want to, you can of course pitch something else to do and oftentimes, people will gladly join your frame.

Step 2 – Management after the fact (short term strategy)

If you have already joined in on social plans you would rather not attend, there are a few options remaining. Firstly, you could request adaptation of the plan. If, for example, you don’t want to dismiss Bob and the agreed to Pasta all-you-can-eat doesn’t exactly fit your macros, reconsidering the venue is not a problem in most cases. This of course depends on the activity and number of people involved. Small ventures will much more likely still go your way than those mith more participants.

As a second strategy, especially considering group events, you always have the option of altering your own participation. Take for example the plan of going to dinner first, pool second and hitting the bars after that. You could communicate that you’d show up for one plan or the other, depending on what fits your schedule. Be aware that leaving might take a lot of determination though, as people love to drag you down with them into things they want to do. They might even try to stretch out the parting period indefinietly. Coming and going at your own terms is not entirely easy.

Lastly, there is always the option of canceling plans, preferably well ahead of time. If you have a social appointment on friday and cancel it say tuesday, people are not likely to be mad or take it as an offense, provided there were no big investments made on their part. Short term cancelation though is almost always interpreted as rude, even if you have a valid excuse. Depending largely on whether you want to still be invited to social venues by these people, you should employ this tactic carefully, as is common sense.

Step 3 – Managing expectations (long term strategy)

The people in your life that you find valuable should know exactly what and when you like to join in on something. This is largely due to you communicating your interests and requirements for meeting up. With me for example, people I value know they don’t have to bother me with invitations to go out drinking, go eat out mindlessly or meet up particulary late (think after 7:30pm) in the first place. Instead they ask me to do activities (think mountainbiking, bouldering, hiking, lifting or simply meeting up and walking & talking in nature) or tend to cater to my needs in general (think cooking together, visiting restaurants during the day because of IF).

That way, we get to spend time together, while the least amount of compromise has to be made on either part. I still get invited to go out and do stuff that doesn’t exactly fit my daily routine – more often than not, I let them know I really appreciate the invitation and resepectfully decline. Their expectation has become not that I will definitly join, but that I might join on my own terms. And sometimes, I do exactly that, having only to compromise a little. This of course is better done beforehand, as to sort out the plans you don’t find interesting in the first place. Better to start late than never. Needless to say, women love seeing a man putting his plans and desires first.

In the end, it’s all about maximizing your enjoyment and personal improvent. If you’re not enyoing or improving yourself, you’re wasting your time.

Conclusion; TL;DR

• allocate your time spent on social ventures only on people you find valuable
• try to never compromise your plans/schedule through managing the expectations of your friends and peers accordingly
• in order to do so, learn to properly manage expectations through communication
• don’t be afraid to opt out after the fact but be weary of the consequences