A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from Questions Asked, chapter 7

The subtraction runs on its own. Most spending takes effort — you hand something over, you sign, you decide. Time is different: “time is the easiest asset to spend recklessly. It’s so easy to spend it that you don’t have to do anything.” A day passes and the balance drops whether the day was used or wasted, and the account it draws from is finite, with a total you are never shown.

Innocent’s answer is a plain audit — studying the last couple of days, holding them against the last weeks and months, asking what takes most of his time and whether it earns its cost.

The audit pays twice. Looking back, it shows where the hours really went, which is rarely where they were assumed to go. Looking forward, it gives a preview, because the future is largely built from present spending: hours put into a skill now already imply a more practiced self later. The total stays unknown either way. What changes is that the days stop slipping past unexamined.