How Much of Your Time Are You Allowed to Treasure?

A reflection on guilt, usefulness, and the permission we keep waiting for.

I have a confession.

If someone asks me for my time— a favor, a phone call, a read of their manuscript, a coffee, an introduction to someone in my network— and I say no — and I then go and read a novel, take a long walk, play cello, learn a new magic trick, let an afternoon stay mine, eat ice cream, or watch Netflix (especially if I’m eating ice cream while watching Netflix)— I feel guilty. But why?

I’ve never been able to explain this to myself. The enjoyment is the trigger. The pleasure itself becomes the evidence of the crime. As if I could have gotten away with saying no, right up until the moment I was caught having a good time instead.

I think about this more than I’d like to admit. And underneath the guilt, when I actually look, there are three questions I’ve never fully answered.

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The first. If I know I have the skill to help someone — if I’m genuinely capable of doing the thing they’re asking — how do I look myself in the mirror after saying no? Incompetence is an excuse. Capability isn’t. To have the gift and withhold it feels like a small betrayal of the person asking, and maybe of the gift itself.

The second. Isn’t the whole point of life to be useful? We praise it in eulogies. He was always there for people. She never turned anyone away. Nobody gets remembered for the afternoons they kept for themselves. If usefulness is the measure of a life well lived, then every hour I treasure is an hour I’m failing the only test that counts.

The third. And if I flip it — if I say the point of life is to enjoy it, to treasure my own hours, to protect my own experience of being alive — isn’t that just selfishness with better marketing? Isn’t “self-care” the most flattering word we’ve ever invented for putting ourselves first?

Am I the only one who thinks so much about this stuff?

I’m not asking these questions rhetorically. I’ve sat with them for years, and for years I assumed one of them had to win. Either I’m here to serve, or I’m here to savor.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to notice that the guilt was pointing at a hidden assumption, not a real debt. Look again at the question I keep asking myself: How much of my time am I allowed to treasure?

Allowed. By whom?

There’s an auditor buried in that sentence. Someone keeping the books, deciding how many units of enjoyment I’ve earned against how many units of service I’ve banked, ready to flag the moment I overdraw. The guilt is just that auditor clearing its throat. And for most of my life I’ve negotiated with it — pleading my case, justifying my walk, earning my novel by being useful enough beforehand to deserve it.

So at some point I went looking for the auditor. I wanted to find the authority that grants permission to enjoy a life, so I could finally ask it directly how much I was cleared for.

You know what I found?

There’s no one there.

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There never was. No cosmic ledger, no committee, no figure at the desk tallying my hours.

The permission I’d been waiting to receive was never going to be granted, because there was no one outside me with the standing to grant it. I was the one holding the pen the whole time. I’d been writing myself overdraft notices and then feeling terrible about a debt I’d invented.

That’s the first move, and it sounds almost too simple until you try to live it: the question “what am I allowed to enjoy” dissolves the moment you realize you’re the only one who was ever keeping score.

But I can feel the obvious objection, because I raise it against myself constantly. Doesn’t this just hand me a permission slip to be selfish? Congratulations, the auditor was imaginary, now go ignore everyone who needs you. If no one’s keeping the books, what stops me from spending every hour on myself and calling it enlightenment?

This is where the second move matters, and it’s the one I actually believe in.

A life you genuinely treasure is not the opposite of a life of service. It’s the precondition for the kind of service that doesn’t quietly destroy you. The person who never keeps a single hour for himself — who says yes to every request because no felt unsurvivable — isn’t being generous.

When you give from an empty place, the giving curdles. It turns into resentment dressed up as virtue — and the people you're helping can feel it. They sense the quiet tally of what they now owe you, even when you swear you're not keeping one.

This is what I’ve come to call, in my own work, honest love — and it applies to how we treat ourselves first. The love part says your own experience of being alive is real, and just as valid as anyone else’s. The honest part says you can’t pour from a self you’ve spent into nothing. Both are true at once. That’s not a loophole. That’s the actual structure of a sustainable human being.

So the three questions I opened with were rigged from the start, because each of them assumed a tradeoff that doesn’t exist.

Let’s try again.

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How can I look myself in the mirror if I say no when I’m able to help? You can, because being able to do something has never been the same as being obligated to do it. Capability is not a summons. If it were, the most capable people would owe the most and rest the least, which is exactly the trap so many of them are caught in.

Isn’t the point of life to be useful? Usefulness is a beautiful part of a life. It is not the whole of one, and the moment you make it the whole, you stop being useful in the way that actually matters — present, generous, unbegrudging — and start being merely available.

Isn’t enjoying life selfish? Only if you think your enjoyment comes at someone else’s expense. Treasuring your own time crosses into the toxic kind of selfishness when it actually costs someone something that was theirs — when you break a promise that mattered, walk away from a responsibility that was genuinely yours, or get what you want by using someone. Saying no to a stranger's request so you can rest doesn't do that. Skipping your own kid's recital after you promised you’d be there because you couldn't be bothered does. The difference isn't how good it feels to you. It's whether someone who was actually counting on you pays the price.

My treasuring an afternoon takes nothing away from you. The man who has tasted his own life is, it turns out, far more capable of helping you taste yours. Enjoyment and contribution were never on opposite sides of the ledger. They were never on a ledger at all.

In fact, this question is what sent me to study this in the first place. I built a Healthy Selfishness Scale (you can take the test here). I define healthy selfishness as “having a healthy respect for your own health, growth, happiness, joy, and freedom.” The items on the scale include:

• “I have a healthy form of selfishness (e.g., meditation, eating healthy, exercising, etc.) that doesn’t hurt others, but brings me greater happiness.”

• “Even though I give a lot to others, I know when to recharge.”

• “I give myself permission to enjoy myself, even if it doesn’t necessarily help others.”

• “I take good care of myself.”

The people who scored high on my healthy selfishness scale weren't more self-centered. In fact, paradoxically, there was a negative correlation with narcissism! What’s more, they reported higher levels of well-being, lower levels of depression, and more genuine reasons for helping others — not fewer.

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I sometimes still feel the guilt. I want to be useful; I want to help everyone. I’d be lying if I said the auditor went silent the day I discovered it was imaginary. Old voices don’t leave because you’ve out-argued them; they leave slowly, as you keep declining to obey them.

Now, when the guilt arrives in the middle of the walk, I can name it. That’s not a debt. That’s a habit. And I keep walking. I’ve become better at distinguishing between wanting to help someone from a place of abundance vs. needing to help someone because of a compulsion. There is a difference. A big difference. I’m much better now at feeling the difference in my body and trusting myself.

The answer to “how much of my time am I allowed to treasure” was never going to come from outside me, because there was never anyone out there to ask. The answer is: all of it. Every hour you’re alive is yours to treasure. One of the most profound realizations you could make in life is just how short life is, how fast it all goes, and just how much your time is actually worth.

And the finitude cuts both ways: enjoying your life doesn't take away from how much you can give to others — it’s what makes giving possible in the first place. Filling up your own cup gives you a stronger container to give to others.

You were always allowed to treasure your life. You were just waiting for someone else to say so.