Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend i... — Harvey Mackay

Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.

Author: Harvey Mackay

Insight: We treat time like it's infinite because there's no price tag attached to wasting an hour. You scroll through your phone or agree to meetings you don't care about, and nothing immediate happens. No alarm goes off. But that hour is gone forever. The cost isn't paid upfront; it's paid in regret later when you realize you traded your life for distractions that didn't matter. The tricky part is realizing you don't actually own your time. You're just borrowing it from the future. This shifts the focus from hoarding minutes to investing them. Instead of trying to squeeze every second for maximum productivity, ask where you want the memory to land. Did you spend that afternoon on something that feels warm looking back, or just something that felt urgent in the moment? The goal isn't to save time, since you can't keep it anyway. It's to spend it on things that enrich the person you're becoming while it slips through your fingers.