Time is something we all have. It’s in short supply; there’s never enough of it — but it’s something we’ll never, ever get more of.

Time can’t be saved.

It is constantly, automatically debited from our accounts, moment by moment by moment. We can spend it differently, but we can’t save it up. And nobody can give their time to somebody else. They can spend their own in service of somebody else, but time cannot be transferred.

Time is, to use a phrase that may send a shiver down your spine, non-fungible.

This, I think, is one of the greatest errors we made throughout all our industrial ages. We developed systems, built machines, organised societies in ways that were intended to save time. And decade by decade, orbit by orbit, we never saved a moment of it. We just spent it differently.

We spent it planting crops, servicing machines, attending meetings. We spent it writing quarterly reports and unloading dishwashers. And somehow, in all this endless spending, we learned that the way to spend our time was on activities that would change the way we’d spend our future time. The more meetings I attend this year, the more I can spend on plane fares to travel rapidly to more meetings I can attend next year. We spend time in order to spend future time, in order to save… what?

It’s hard not to think this way. One day, we imagine — one day I will have saved all the time I need to do and be what I truly want.

Except that time doesn’t work that way.

I have always been a saver. While my brother would spend his shiny two-dollar allowance on sweets the moment he received it each week, I hoarded mine in a kitschy porcelain pig until there was enough to exchange for a banknote. I enjoyed the promise of growth almost as much as my brother enjoyed his candy.

My brother was also far more enterprising than me. He decided he really wanted to get a gaming console, but realised that his cash flow situation wasn’t sufficient for this. So, he negotiated an arrangement with my father that would see him earning extra allowance, faster, in exchange for helping dad with some construction work. In no short order, my brother had saved more money than I’d ever had, despite having spent even more than that. He got his console, with change to spare on a stack of games to accompany it.

Time, however, doesn’t work that way.

No matter how many extra widgets I build, no matter how intricately I craft my prompts, I can never refill that porcelain pig to replenish the time I spent building widgets and crafting prompts. I have to choose how I spend it the first time — because the first time is the only one I’ll get.

I write this because I need to warn you.

It’s not time you’re saving — so what is it?