Feeling the Weeks Fly By? Count Your Saturdays and Spend Them on What Matters

Have you felt it lately? The year seems to have sped up. Summer feels like last week, and somehow the holidays are already peeking around the corner.

Okay, real talk. Some weeks feel like they’re happening to us.

In 2016, the essayist and Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham published a short piece called Life Is Short. It changed how I look at a calendar, and I want to walk you through the idea, because it’s simple and it’s beautiful.

Time Feels Endless Until You Count It

Life feels long when we picture time as a smooth, endless stream. It turns precious the moment we count it in the moments we care about. Count those moments, and you’ll know exactly where your attention belongs.

The essay makes this visible through parenthood. Count the weekends you get with a two year old and the number is small. Count the years a child feels the full magic of the holidays and you might land somewhere around eight.

Eight is a number you can hold in your hand.

Try it with your own life. How many more autumns with your parents close by? How many more Saturday mornings before your kids head out into their own lives? How many more summers with your best friend down the street?

It’s tender. And it’s wonderfully clarifying.

Clear Away the Filler and Make Room for What You Love

Once you feel how short life is, the old phrase “life is too short for this” becomes real guidance. It points straight at the filler that sneaks into a day. Endless meetings. Online arguments. Busywork. Habits that feel good for five minutes and leave you empty for the rest of the evening.

Some of that filler arrives with our circumstances. Some of it we invite in ourselves, often because it’s designed to be irresistible.

I love the simple test the essay offers for telling them apart. Ask whether you’ll still care about this thing a year from now. Filler feels sharp and urgent in the moment, then fades fast. What matters keeps mattering. Coffee with a friend feels like time well spent forever.

So instead of asking, “How can I fit more in?” try asking, “What can I gently clear away to make room for what I love?”

Point Your Impatience at the Good Stuff

This is the line I keep returning to.

Cultivate a habit of impatience about the things you most want to do.

Paul Graham, Life Is Short, January 2016

Most of us save our impatience for traffic and slow wifi. What a gift to aim it at the good stuff instead. The book you want to write. The trip with your mom. The mountain you keep talking about.

Some windows close quietly. A parent grows older. A friend moves across the country. The chance we kept saving for someday slips by while we’re busy.

Impatience, pointed well, is a form of love.

Savor the Moments While You’re Inside Them

There’s one more move, and it’s the gentlest one. Slow down enough to notice the good moments while they’re happening.

Science backs this up beautifully. In a 2012 daily diary study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, Paul Jose, Bee Lim and Fred Bryant found that savoring the good events of a day was linked with feeling happier on that day. The good moment counts more when we stay with it.

My essay on letting this morning become your destination goes deeper on that kind of presence.

Your Morning Practice, Counting What Counts

1. Count one thing. Pick someone you love and count how many ordinary Saturdays you might share this year.
2. Name one filler. Write down one recurring habit that drains you and will feel small a year from now.
3. Clear ten minutes. Trim that filler by ten minutes today.
4. Spend them on what matters. Give those ten minutes to a call, a walk, a page or a long hug.
5. Savor it out loud. When the good moment arrives, whisper to yourself, “This one counts.”

If the day gets busy, then let a single text to someone you love count as your ten minutes. Small steps like this are the heart of if then planning.

A Handful of Saturdays, Held Well

Eight is a number you can hold in your hand. So is this week.

Every ordinary morning you share with the people you love is one of a precious few. And every one you notice becomes yours to keep.

Who do you want to count your Saturdays with?

Start early. Start counting. Start today.

Complement this with Running Short on Time? Arnold Bennett Hands You a Full Purse of Hours Every Morning, Always Rushing Toward Someday? Let This Morning Become Your Destination and Why Slowing Down Is the Most Productive Thing You Can Do in the Morning.

Want a calm, intentional start every day? Hold Until Sunrise is our little app for mornings that matter.

For a little goodness in your inbox every Sunday, join us here.

With love, Paolo

Sources

• Paul Graham, Life Is Short, January 2016
• Jose, P. E., Lim, B. T. and Bryant, F. B., Does savoring increase happiness? A daily diary study, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2012