Time: The Useless Resource

A visual autopsy of the only resource everyone wastes equally.

Time is the one thing you can't buy, borrow, save, return, or unsubscribe from. And yet we treat it like an optional side quest.

We underestimate long stretches, overestimate short ones, and somehow believe "future me" is going to fix everything.

Spoiler: future you is just present you with worse knees.

Your brain was not designed for this timeline

Humans evolved to track seasons, not 8-hour workdays or the 42 minutes you just lost to scrolling. Your internal clock is basically a sundial taped to a Roomba: wildly inconsistent and occasionally upside-down.

How long do you think 10 seconds is?

Press start, then try to stop it at exactly 10 seconds.

0.00s

You live in the thin slice of the universe called "right now"

Imagine the universe as a 24-hour clock. Earth forms at midnight. Life appears around 4 AM. Dinosaurs show up at 10 PM. Modern humans? 11:59:59 PM.

Congratulations: you are one second. Not metaphorically — literally.

Big Bang
Universe forms
4 AM
Life begins
10 PM
Dinosaurs
11:59:59 PM
Humans

don't blink. that's your entire species.

A Very Unhelpful Timeline of Absolutely Everything

scroll to compress 13.8 billion years into emotional damage

13.8 billion
years ago

The Universe Happens

Everything explodes. No one is around to complain.

4.5 billion
years ago

Earth forms

A ball of lava that will eventually host brunch.

3.5 billion
years ago

Life begins

Microbes appear. They immediately start ruining things.

541 million
years ago

The Cambrian Explosion

Nature hits "shuffle" on creature design.

230 million
years ago

Dinosaurs

Big lizards. Poor long-term planning.

2.5 million
years ago

Early humans

Brains start growing. Trouble begins.

12,000
years ago

Agriculture

People discover wheat → accidentally invent work.

200
years ago

Industrial Revolution

Humans choose pollution in exchange for slightly comfier chairs.

30
years ago

The Internet

Society's collective attention span evaporates instantly.

15
years ago

Smartphones

Time becomes a theoretical concept.

Now
years ago

You, reading this

instead of doing something productive.

you are here → a microscopic dot pretending it runs the place.

Your life is shorter than you think, longer than it feels

Childhood

Feels infinite because your memory was still working and summers lasted 40 years.

Adolescence

Trauma speedrun.

Your 20s

The decade you tell yourself you'll remember fondly later (you won't).

Your 30s

Time starts accelerating like a BMW on a stolen catalytic converter.

Your 40s–60s

Known scientifically as "oh god slow down."

Your 70s+

You finally understand everything, and no one asks you anything.

Subjective Time Speed by Age

080AgeFastSlow

time flies when you're dying.

Time isn't real. But your calendar is.

Your brain treats 5 minutes like 5 hours if it sucks.

Your brain treats 5 hours like 5 minutes if you're hyperfocused.

Planning for the future is just hallucinating structure.

"Later" is a myth you tell yourself.

Multitasking is just doing two things badly at once.

No one knows what they're doing. Especially not you.

The Real Problem Isn't Time — It's You

Time is neutral. You are chaotic.

The issue isn't that the days are too short — it's that your brain is running 47 parallel tabs, none of which are labeled.

Your Brain's Tabs

panic
vague dread
thing you said 4 years ago
amazon order tracking
the idea you'll never build
the idea you will build at 3am
mortality

A practical guide to misusing the time you have left

Accept the chaos

Time won't behave. Neither will you.

Do one thing at a time

The bar is low. Trip over it gracefully.

Touch grass occasionally

Your dopamine receptors need cloud updates.

the clock is ticking. so what? tick louder.

return to library