There are certain trade-offs that I used to blindly accept.

I accepted that it was always better to save time when I could, because I knew time is the most important asset in my life.

Similarly, I lived the first 20 or so years of my life dead-set on saving money wherever possible. If there were two choices for something that I was buying, I’d always go with the cheaper option. Or better yet, I’d try to figure out how to get that thing for free, or to convince myself that I didn’t need whatever I was going to buy.

But my perspective has changed over the past few years.

Ask anyone who really knows me and they’d tell you that I’m still cheap, and I’m still constantly searching for ways to more efficiently use my time. But there have been several situations in which I’ve veered from my past tendencies.

A good example happened just a few months ago.

I have a perfectly acceptable gym right down the road from my house.

It’s big. It’s clean. And it has everything I could ever realistically need to work out the way I like to.

Yet starting at the beginning of this year, I now bypass that gym and drive an extra 15 minutes every morning to go to a different gym.

Now, rather than a 45-minute excursion to workout, it takes me closer to an hour.

On paper, it’s a stupid move. Theoretically, I should be able to have the same quality of workout at each gym, and since time is one of the most important aspects of exercise for me, it would make more sense for me to go to the closer gym.

Yet I’m so happy I made the switch.

I used to dread going to the gym. I’d hate the sound of my alarm clock going off in the morning, and I’d struggle through my exercises.

Now, it’s the exact opposite. When I come home from work, I actually feel myself looking forward to my trip to the gym the next morning.

I like the people at my new gym. I enjoy the atmosphere, and I enjoy the way I feel motivated to give it my all.

So rather than speeding through a quick workout that I hate, I now trade 15 minutes to enjoy my workout.

 

I had a similar situation when I lived in Minneapolis one summer for an internship.

I lived a little ways from my work, and there were two different routes I could take on my commute.

One took 20 minutes, and the other took closer to a half hour. The fast route was a standard highway commute with bumper-to-bumper traffic. The longer route took me through a beautiful stretch of hills, and past a huge lake over which the sun rose every morning.

Again, just looking at the facts and thinking about the trade-off between the two options, it seemed obvious that I should’ve slept in longer and taken the faster route.

Yet almost every morning, I chose the longer drive to work.

 

Along a similar vein, I recently booked a flight across the country, and I had two options. There was a standard flight with Delta, or a very similar flight through Spirit that cost $50 less.

I chose to go with Delta.

 

So what do all three of these situations have in common?

In every situation, I went away from the seemingly logical choice.

With my gym choice and my commute to my internship, I chose to trade time for pleasure. On my cross-country flight, I traded some cash for comfort.

For some reason, these types of decisions used to be so hard for me to make. I could never justify spending more time or money on something than I needed to.

But a few years ago, something clicked.

My goal isn’t to amass the most money, or to minimize the amount of time I spend on every task. My goal is to enjoy my life.

If I’m fortunate enough to be in a position in which I can trade time or money to improve my happiness, then that’s a trade I’d make any day of the week.

Sure, it would be nice to save $50 on the flight. I could even theoretically use that money to do something fun when I get to my destination.

But it’s not worth the cost.

When I fly with Spirit, my 6’4″ frame gets crammed into an undersized seat, and I end up irritable and in pain by the time I get to my destination. With Delta on the other hand, there’s less stress through the boarding process, and I can typically sleep for a few hours without a problem.

So to me, it’s well worth a little extra cash to show up on my vacation in the right state of mind.

-Brandon