Seneca pointed out that people tend to be reflexively stingy with their money, but almost comically wasteful with their time.
There are at least two ways to take this. One is that Seneca thought he used his time better than you and I do, and maybe he did. Another interpretation is that everyday life, for most people, is an untapped gold mine. Certain undone tasks represent huge gains, waiting just a short time away, behind one session of elbow grease. Even ten or fifteen minutes of directed effort, judiciously applied, can improve your life far more than the wages you earn for the same period.
This principle is most obvious when you use that time to fix a broken thing. The broken things in our lives are constantly charging interest. They feel bad to use, or even to witness, and they never run out of bad feeling to impart. Trying to use a pen that barely writes or a vacuum cleaner with poor suction is awful, even if it’s a small-scale awfulness.
Brokenness takes many forms. Continue here....
-- David Cain, Raptitude