A Simple Question That Helped Me Take Back My Time (and Energy)

Hi. Welcome to Bloom Anywhere. I'm Gwen Moran, a writer, editor, author, and problem-solver. My goal is to share information, ideas, and resources to help you overcome obstacles, reach your goals, and get more joy out of life, even when things are messy. Thanks for joining me. (If you got this from a friend, subscribe here: Bloom Anywhere.) I'd love your feedback and suggestions for future topics. Please send me an email: connect@bloomanywhere.com.

Sometimes, someone says something that stops you in your tracks. That happened to me last week.

I was having dinner with a dear friend whose husband recently passed away. As we talked, she told me a story about how, once when he had gotten some bad news, he decided he didn’t want to “spill minutes” on something he couldn’t control.

Spilling minutes. What a brilliant concept. How often do we allow grievances, worries, fears, or even nonsense to take over our thoughts and steal our time? Sometimes, they’re things we can’t control, and the rumination won’t make a difference—or might even make things worse by letting fear take root or sapping the energy we need to manage a difficult situation. Other times, they’re fully within our control, such as doomscrolling on social media or making assumptions about someone’s intent without concrete information.

Saving Minutes for What Matters

In the following days, I started keeping that concept front and center. When I got angry about something that wasn’t consequential, I thought, Is this worth spilling minutes? Sometimes, the answer was “yes,” but it was mostly “no.” Reading or responding to ugliness on social media certainly wasn’t worth spilling minutes. Neither was an annoyance that cropped up that wasn’t small, but was also fixable. I let it go.

What I noticed was how freeing that question has been. Instead of immediately reacting or allowing myself to get tangled up in irritation, it helps me pause. Considering the worth of spilled minutes interrupts knee-jerk reactions and has given me an additional measure of perspective. In being more thoughtful, I saw that so much of what we (I) stew over is fleeting. It may feel urgent in the moment, but when measured against the finite number of minutes we each have, most grievances simply don’t hold up. And, even if they do, there are probably better ways to address them than to engage negatively. If I care enough about the matter, that time and, more importantly, energy can likely be better used by taking positive action and working on solutions.

Let Yourself Feel, Too

That’s not to say that we should dismiss our feelings. Anger, worry, fear, and other emotions can be important clues that something is not right. We may be in a situation that needs to change or in which we need advice or help. Or, there may be no answers, but we’re just facing something that is legitimately scary or worrisome, which we need to process. But there’s a difference between spending time problem-solving, processing, or healing and squandering our time on thoughts and emotions that don’t serve us and aren’t worthy of our precious minutes. Sometimes, our feelings need attention. And sometimes, they need to learn to play by themselves, without us.

Life will always present challenges, frustrations, injustices, fears, and moments of grief. What we can choose is whether to “spill minutes” on things that drain us or invest those minutes in people, experiences, and actions that enrich us and/or make the world better. My friend’s late husband, in his wisdom, understood that distinction.

In just the past week, the question, Is this worth spilling minutes? has become part of my thought process. I have found that it’s an excellent touchstone to keep me focused on what matters. It reminds me that every day is made up of thousands of tiny choices about how to spend our attention and energy. The more deliberately we guard those minutes, the more fully we live.

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