Intentionality: What We Lack in Spending, Time, and Energy

I watch countless people prioritize a job that does not fulfill them each day.  When asked why, the answer is always “money.”  They do not love their jobs, but they need money.

But those same people spend their money on coffee, a takeout lunch, and multiple energy drinks to “survive” working at their jobs.  Their vacations last a week or two and cost twice as much as my month in Sicily because they can only travel “when they can get the leave.”  “When they can get the leave” is when the flights and hotels cost double, and the crowds prevent you from getting a reservation at the most delicious restaurant.  Between vacations, they come home drained without any energy for their families.  They do not have the time or energy for more than a rare catch-up with their friends.

These people think I am crazy for not having a job because they think their jobs bring them financial security.  I think these people are crazy because they have lost sight of the whole purpose of life.  They are living the way they were told, without any intentionality.

What Intentionality Is and Is Not

For me, intentionality is the act of choosing a path through life.  It means choosing how to organize your days, use your time, and spend your money to feel fulfilled, experience joy, and make the impression you seek to have on the world.  This may involve achieving your goals, helping those who could use assistance, building community, teaching others, sharing your knowledge and resources, bettering yourself in various ways, experiencing your dreams, and so much more.  There are many intentional paths to choose, and there is no wrong intentional path.

But there is a wrong path through life: a path without intention.  This is the path almost everyone I know walks each day.  The unintentional path is not chosen, just followed without question.

Most people do not recognize that they are living without intentionality because we follow a common trajectory normalized by society and most of our upbringings.  You are supposed to go to school, get good grades, either go to college or start a trade apprenticeship, enter the career that you “chose,” gradually climb the corporate ladder or expand your responsibilities, eventually become a C-suite executive or assume ownership of the business where you once worked as an apprentice, and retire at 65 years old.  Simultaneously, you are supposed to find a life partner, marry that life partner, have children and raise them, help aging parents, and figure out what your retirement hobby will be sometime in your 50s or 60s because you have not had a hobby since you got married in your 20s or 30s.

If you prefer that path and feel joy and fulfillment from it, that is wonderful!  Most people do not.  Most people end up feeling like they do not have enough energy to show up for both their job and their immediate family—forget extended family or friends.  Most people spend money for convenience since time is scarce.  So many on this path are struggling to survive, and they keep wondering why life is so difficult because they are doing exactly what everyone told them they are supposed to do to be happy.

They are struggling because their choices are unintentional.  They never asked themselves what happiness looked like.  Do they want to climb the corporate ladder?  Do they want to get married and have children?  Do they want to make as much money as possible?

Your answers may be “yes” to some of those questions, but you may be surprised to find that part of your assumed path is not a path you would choose if presented with a choice.  Becoming intentional means acknowledging that these societal norms are actually choices.  We can opt in or opt out of any of these aspects of the average American life.  If you do not make a choice, you will almost certainly opt in naturally.  The only way to opt out of any piece of the unintentional life is to practice a high degree of intentionality.

An Intentional Path

Setting an intentional path means thinking about what you actually want in life.  You have time to do this because it is the single most important thing you have to accomplish.  You could be like most American zombies shuffling past you in the street and let the urgent take precedence over the important.  Or you could figure out the most important piece of your existence.  It is your choice.

Many of the most compelling books about work or finances actually offer useful frameworks to dig into setting an intentional path.  In The Four Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss uses the Dreamline exercise to push readers to consider their ideal lives.  I loved the exercise, and recommend it as a starting point to sort out your priorities and determine what your ideal life costs.  Die With Zero offers a different approach, suggesting “time buckets” to prioritize different aspects of life  based on our time, ability, and wealth at different phases.  This approach is especially useful if you anticipate having significantly different amounts of time (perhaps because you want to have children) or wealth (for example, if you are in debt from medical school but will one day be a doctor with a high salary) in different stages of your life.

Regardless of the framework you choose, here are some basic guidelines for choosing an intentional path:

• Write down what makes you happiest.  What are the brightest spots in your day, week, month, and year?  They can be simple things (a weekly gettogether with a friend) or big events (an annual trip to see a Grand Prix).

• Write down what makes you feel accomplished.  Include day-to-day events, like completing a workout, and big projects, like renovating a house.  Also include what you would like to accomplish, even if it feels impossible right now.

• Write down how you would spend your day if you could choose how to spend your time.  Include if you would wake up at a different time, spend more or less time on yourself and those around you, activities you would like to add or remove from your day, and anything else.

• Write down how you would spend your year if you could choose how to spend your time.  Include if you would see family and friends more often, travel more, spend more time on a hobby, or anything else.

• Write down your dreams.  These may overlap with other places, but they can range from holding a certain position to taking a certain once-in-a-lifetime trip.  Nothing is too crazy.

Then it is time for the big question: 

How does your life today compare to what your intentional life should look like?

The answer shows you where you have adjustments to make.

Your Inevitable Pushback to Change

I already know your inevitable response to my suggestion that you adjust your life to make it your dream life: But I don’t have time to travel for two months a year!  But I don’t have the money to quit my job or buy my dream house on the bay!  But I don’t have the energy to pick up photography again while raising kids and earning a living!

Here is my harsh response: Have you considered that you are incorrectly prioritizing your life?

It is true that you cannot completely overhaul your life overnight if you realize your ideal intentional life is significantly different from your current reality.  However, you must decide where to begin making changes and what timeframes are realistic to make larger changes.

While large changes take time, small changes should happen immediately.  Delaying an intentional life means you will never live one.  There is never enough time, money, or energy to explore an intentional life unless we decide now is the moment to take a step closer to intentionality.  Adjusting how we spend our time, money, or energy can create small steps towards intentionality that grow into an intentional life over time.

Intentional Spending

I think intentional spending is the easiest first step towards an intentional life because you get the immediate gratification of taking money you typically spend on something you do not care about that much and reallocating it to something you care about a lot.  Intentional spending provides instant proof of the gratification of an intentional life.

Here is how this works: First, pinpoint an area where you would like to spend more.  This could be anything, but I would recommend looking towards what you wrote down for how you would spend a day, how you would spend a year, or what your dreams are.  Find something on that list that is constrained by money.  

As an example, I enjoy spending time in the Mediterranean every summer.  I believe there is no better climate and weather than summer in the Mediterranean, and I prioritize spending money to give myself the blissful joy of being warm but not hot, basking in the sun but not sweating uncontrollably due to humidity (like on the East Coast of the United States).  Intentional spending for me means prioritizing money to pay for an annual trip to the Mediterranean when it is warm.

To practice intentional spending, I should figure out how to spend more on my annual Mediterranean adventure.  This happens by spending less on pieces of life that I treasure less than drinking a bottle of wine made with grapes from the soil of Mount Etna while eating one of the best pizzas I have ever tasted from San Vito Lo Capo and watching the sunset over the water at Macari Beach.  

Intentional spending for me means more of this kind of takeout and less takeout because I am tired on a dreary day in Washington, DC.

When your mindset is, “Today is so tough, and lunch at my favorite restaurant near work would make it so much better,” it is difficult to decide to forgo takeout and instead eat that sad salad at your desk at work.  I would give in every time!  But my mindset is, “Would I rather go out to lunch today or have one more evening with pizza and wine watching the sunset over the Mediterranean from a beach in Sicily?”  The Mediterranean pizza and wine sunset wins every time.

Your intentional spending will be different than mine.  It could even be the opposite of mine if you love dining out in the city or town where you live and dislike travel!  Whatever it is, prioritize the most spending towards what you value the most.  Intentional spending means spending more on what we love and less on what we do not value.

Unintentional spending is rampant right now because we live without intentionality.  We try to soothe the lack of fulfillment we feel in our day-to-day lives with quick purchases that deliver a dopamine hit.  If you are making purchases to cheer you up or make your day better, you are most likely practicing some unintentional spending.  Shifting to intentional spending will make you happier by delivering more of the moments that give you the most joy.

Intentional Time Allocation

Allocating your time intentionally is more difficult than intentional spending because it may require you to reject the pattern of American society.  Most people I know assume a job is required.  The required hours of that job are the first event they put in their calendar.  It is often the only unquestionable event in someone’s week.  I know too many people who can show up on time to work but absolutely nothing else in their lives, showing that work is their ultimate priority.  They will miss dinners with friends or family members, commitments to hobbies or community events, and even their child’s game because of an unplanned work “emergency.”

If you love your job, you cannot think of a better way to spend your week than working exactly as many hours as you do, and you even wrote down your job as your dream, great!  A few lucky people do truly work a dream job.

If your job is not your dream and the thing that fulfills you the most, it should not be your biggest priority.  American work culture is broken, so you probably think it has to be.  You are wrong.

At my last job, the one that I left due to some terrible leadership on the project I worked on in the end, the required core hours were 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.  I could go into the ridiculous misunderstanding of “core hours” displayed by the program, but that is not the point.  The point is I coached rugby the entire time I worked on that project, and I left at 4:00 p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays to coach.  This worked out because I told my employer I needed to leave early on those days to coach, and I blocked the time in my calendar.  I did not ask for permission.  Employers do not give permission often.  But when you tell them you have a priority, they usually accept it because there was never a question.  Do not give them permission to question your priorities, and you will be able to set them.

Intentional time allocation requires you to do this.  You must put in the most important parts of your life first and fit the other parts of your life around them.  Time with your kids, your favorite hobby, and community events related to your volunteer position go in the calendar before your job if they are more important to you than your job.  You cannot delay living your life until you are retired.  You need to shape your life to feel true to you as early as you can.  You do this by spending your time in a way that gives you joy and fulfillment.

Beyond the day-to-day, this also may mean more time each week, month, or year spent visiting friends and family, prioritizing certain events, or traveling the world.  Honor your dreams.  My commitment to go to the Mediterranean in the summer mentioned above has morphed into spending a month in the Mediterranean.  Our month-long trip to Sicily last year was beautiful.  Many would call it a once-in-a-lifetime trip.  Those same people might also call our 23-day honeymoon through Corfu, Athens, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Mostar, Split, Zadar, and Zagreb a once-in-a-lifetime trip.  I disagree.  We already have our month in the Mediterranean booked for this summer because I do not believe in once-in-a-lifetime dreams.  I believe in allocating the time to live our dream life every year.

Intentional Energy

The most ambitious of you will read everything that came before this point and think, “I can do it all.  I can honor my intentional priorities and keep up with the life society recommends.”  I know because I was you.  You think you can work crazy hours, spend time with your family, keep doing your favorite hobby, give back to your community, and squeeze in an insane amount of travel or other adventures on long weekends and the occasional one-to-two weeks.  I understand because this was my life in 2019.  As bad as 2020 was, I am so grateful that it stopped my unsustainable life in its tracks and forced me to look at how to honor my priorities in a way that would not lead to imminent burnout.

Those of us who are magicians when it comes to time and money still have limited energy.  Yes, you have limited energy, even if you have not hit the limit yet.  You may not realize it immediately when you start running out of energy.  It starts manifesting as a lack of focus in certain areas of life before ramping up to some days where you just feel useless.  When it gets to the point that you have no energy for the important events, you realize you did not allocate your energy intentionally.

Energy allocation is the biggest superpower.  I kept a typical 9-to-5 for longer than seemed possible because I was giving a full-time job part-time energy.  Saving my remaining energy for my priorities allowed me to carry a mismatch in time allocation a bit longer because my energy allocation was authentic.  In some ways, intentional energy allocation can allow you to maintain unintentional time or financial decisions to an extent.

But intentional energy allocation, while most important, is usually the last piece of intentionality Americans embrace.  Americans love to spend every bit of energy during their work and then sit while their kids watch a movie, “spending time with their kids” but really scrolling through work emails.  If you do this, you are denying your kids your energy.  You may be “with” them, but your energy is with work.  Your priorities deserve your energy.

Getting intentional with your energy allocation can feel like one of the most difficult shifts if you have never considered your energy allocation before.  Start small: Dedicate some time when you know you have the best energy to your priorities.  If you know you have the best energy first thing in the morning, use this time to go to the gym, write your book, make breakfast with your kids, go on a walk with a friend, or whatever it is you prioritize.  Dedicating high-energy times once or twice a week can get you in the habit of allocating your energy intentionally, and you will feel how great intentional energy allocation is immediately.

Eventually, learning to spend your money, allocate your time, and use your energy intentionally will bring you to a place where you can live a more intentional life.  Fill your days with a purpose that you choose to pursue with the people you love the most.  Intentional living is different for everyone who does it, but there are still relatively few of us trying to live intentionally.  Give living intentionally a try.  You may just feel happy and fulfilled each day.