I watched The Substance this week. It was a pretty good movie.

I didn’t like the ending, but it was okay. The concept was interesting.

The movie is about an actress. She gets cast in a show mainly because she is pretty. But as she gets older, she gets fired.

Then she discovers a substance. This substance allows her to be young and pretty for seven days. After that, she becomes old for another seven days. She has to switch between these two states and make excuses for her absences.

At one point, her younger self starts using more time than she should. She enjoys partying and having fun. Meanwhile, the older actress feels depressed and is not having fun at all. Her life just sucks, so why not spend more time being young and happy.

So, she decides to take some time from her younger self. When she returns to her old self, she realizes she is not just borrowing time. She is consuming it. She is never getting the time from older self back.

I found this very interesting. It happens to us all the time.

We get deeply focused on things like work, sports, reading, games or else.

In doing so, we often forget about other important things. Things we really want to spend our time on. Things our slow-thinker self tells us we should be doing. We miss out on something that would be very beneficial to us but maybe is not as catching as what we’re doing now.

This realization can be tough. It feels like we are taking time from something else without even noticing.

Living while thinking time is finite sucks. It takes away enjoyment out of everything. Time management increases throughput at the expense of enjoyment.