Scarcest of All Resources

"The one thing that I learned in jail is that money is not the prime asset in life. Time is."
--Gordon Gekko (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps)

We live in a world of scarcity. To survive and prosper, each of us must consume resources that are in short supply. Scarcity of many resources can be alleviated through production. By combining labor with materials and other productive resources, we can produce more so that we can further pursue our interests.

Production reduces scarcity, but does not eliminate it. This is because one or more inputs constrains production. Usually that resource is time. At any moment we can be in only one place, which limits what we can work on at a particular time.

Longitudinally our time is constrained as well. In the near term, factors like preference for leisure over work interests and fatigue limit how long we engage in production before doing something else. In the long term, our lives on earth are limited and death is certain.

Indeed, time may be the scarcest of all resources. Each second that we consume cannot be recovered.

Because we are practiced economizers, one of the more important questions we can constantly ask ourselves is, "Am I making the most of my time?"