Lost time is never found again

  • Benjamin Franklin

Everyday when going to sleep, I feel I didn’t do justice to my time today. Even though I hear people say they admire my work ethic, I know I can do more.

But why is that? Is it because I actually am not doing enough? Or something else?

I have noticed that each day, I do something which makes me closer to my goal, but not with the intensity I should. Maybe I am too harsh on myself, maybe not. But the fact of the matter is that, since I am feeling this way, there has to be some truth to it. But what can be done to negate this feeling? or remove it altogether?

The Consumption Trap

We live in an age of infinite content. There’s always another article to read, another video to watch, another podcast to listen to. The algorithm feeds us exactly what we want, when we want it. This feels productive: we’re learning, staying informed, getting inspired. But consumption, no matter how educational, is fundamentally passive. It’s easy. It doesn’t demand the same from us that creation does.

When I consume, time slips away without resistance. An hour disappears into scrolling, reading, watching. There’s no friction, no discomfort. But when I create, when I write, build, or make something, every minute is earned. Creation demands focus, intention, and the willingness to struggle with imperfection. That’s why it feels harder. That’s also why it matters more.

The Intensity Problem

Doing something toward your goal every day is good. But there’s a difference between motion and progress. I can spend an hour “working” on something, but if that hour is fragmented by distractions, diluted by half-attention, or spent on easy tasks that don’t move the needle, then I haven’t really used that hour. I’ve merely passed through it.

The question isn’t just “Did I do something today?” It’s “Did I do it with the intensity that the goal demands?” Because goals don’t care about our participation trophies. They care about the depth of our engagement, the focus we bring, the willingness to do the hard thing when the easy thing is right there.

Maybe the feeling of not doing enough isn’t about quantity at all. Maybe it’s about quality. About knowing, deep down, that we held something back: that we could have gone deeper, stayed longer, pushed harder, but we chose comfort instead.

The Harsh Voice

There’s a voice that asks: Am I being too harsh on myself? Should I celebrate what I’ve already accomplished rather than fixating on what I haven’t?

Perhaps. Self-compassion matters. Burnout is real. Rest is not weakness.

But there’s another truth: that voice of dissatisfaction, that restless feeling at night, isn’t always the enemy. Sometimes it’s the truest thing about us. It’s the gap between who we are and who we’re capable of becoming. It’s the signal that we haven’t yet given ourselves fully to what matters.

The trick is learning to distinguish between the harsh voice of perfectionism (which paralyzes us with impossible standards) and the honest voice of ambition (which simply reminds us that we’re capable of more).

What Can Be Done

Creating more and consuming less is a start. But it’s not enough to just create—it has to be deliberate creation. Here’s what I’m learning:

Time block with intention. Don’t just “find time” for important work. Decide in advance when the deep work happens, and protect those hours like they’re sacred. Because they are.

Eliminate the friction of starting. Most of my wasted time isn’t in doing shallow work. It’s in the gap between finishing one thing and starting the next. That’s where scrolling lives. That’s where consumption hides. The faster I can move from “done” to “doing,” the less time bleeds away.

Measure by output, not hours. At the end of the day, I don’t ask “How much time did I spend?” I ask “What exists now that didn’t exist this morning?” A written page. A solved problem. A completed task. If the answer is nothing, then no amount of “busyness” counts.

Accept that discomfort is the price. The work that matters always feels like too much. It’s supposed to. If it felt easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing. The feeling of “I should be doing more” might never go away—and maybe that’s not a bug, but a feature. It means I’m still hungry. It means I haven’t settled.

The Truth About Time

Time is the only resource we can never get back. Money can be re-earned, relationships can be repaired(kinda), skills can be learned. But the hour that just passed? Gone. Forever.

That’s not meant to create anxiety. It’s meant to create clarity. When we truly accept that lost time is never found again, we stop treating today like a rough draft. We stop waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect mood, the perfect circumstances.

We simply begin.

Because the feeling of not doing enough? It won’t disappear when we achieve the goal. There will always be another mountain. The only way to make peace with it is to know, each night, that we gave what we had. Not everything. Not perfection. But the best we could muster in that moment, on that day.

And then we wake up and do it again.

That’s all we can do. That’s all we need to do.