A few weeks ago I picked up a package of cut pineapple and kiwi from the grocery store. With 4 days to go until the “best buy” date I ripped open the package to eat a piece as soon as I got home. But it had soured. Ugh!
I quickly put the receipt next to the fruit package in the fridge and added “return spoiled fruit” to my To Do List. I was going to get my $5.99 back!
Several days went by and I had not found the time to return the fruit. Finally, I found an opportunity the following weekend (during a recent heat wave) to walk the 2 blocks and get my money back. I got $5.99 in store credit and a bit of attitude from the store manager for taking too long to bring back the fruit.
On my walk back home I felt wholly disappointed—I was so bound to bring justice to this (tiny) injustice in my life, and now I have a slip of paper (which I’ll probably forget about) promising $5.99 off my next bill. I had spent 20 minutes on the actual return, and probably another 20 minutes—added up—for every time I opened the fridge that week and felt irritated by the spoiled fruit and also annoyed with myself for not finding time to return it.
It’s hard to explain but there was something very feminine about my righteousness to bring justice to my hard-earned money and the store’s poor product. Maybe because coupon cutting, grocery shopping and budgeting household needs has been relegated to women for so long. I started to think about how my partner (and a lot of men I know) would not have bothered with the return. It was hard to contemplate the idea of letting go of the responsibility I felt to correct the situation—not just get my money back but to make sure the store knew their failing. Why? Why is it my responsibility to perform the quality assurance check on a business I have no stake in? I then remembered that I once returned a $.99 yogurt to a grocery store 6 blocks away because the seal had been punctured. And then it dawned on me—my pursuit of justice was costing me more than the best outcome could offer. And while I was taking on the responsibility to make someone else’s business better I was taking away my ability to grow my own business.
The time and stress—(yes To Do List items that stare at me and don’t get checked off make me stressed—you too? Cool, we should work on that together.)—related to this fruit situation was absolutely not worth 40 minutes of my precious time in life or the measly $5.99 store credit burning a hole in my wallet. I earn more than $5.99/40 minutes of work. I also have a finite amount of time and energy to put into growing my business because I have another full time day job. This fruit situation taught me that my priorities need to be realigned. If I’m serious about my career, I should have thrown out the fruit and made a mental note not to buy it again. Done. 30 seconds spent on the problem. $5.99 lost but a lesson for the future gained. And 39 minutes and 30 seconds saved to, I don’t know, work on this blog post, recenter myself by walking the dog, or enjoy the peace I find when I have nothing on my To Do List.
This is a long post but the lesson is big here, you guys. Your time is very valuable. You don’t have to spend it righting little wrongs that happen all the time. Let go of them. You can do that. It’s not irresponsible. At work this can look like choosing not to respond to your unhinged coworkers’ email rant—even when you believe she is misrepresenting the truth. Or deciding that if you’ve presented an idea in a meeting and it’s not being heard, how many times must you repeat yourself before you stop and let it go? We have control over how we spend our time but we give that control away when we spend it trying to right wrongs that bring us no where good. What if we didn’t rectify every situation? What if our best idea was not the one that our teams embraced? When can we let go and let others find their way out of their own messes? Your brain is too valuable to spend getting lost in every injustice.
Align your time with your goals and don’t cry about (or spend any of your time on) the metaphorical spoiled fruit.
Note: Change is hard. Just last week I chose to have a giant cement planter shipped to a store instead of to my place because I would save $6. You know where this is going. I spent time, $5.50 in transit costs, and now have a muscle spasm in my elbow because I tried to save $6. That store wasn’t going to get my hard earned money! My choice hurt me more than it hurt them. On the plus side, my new planter is really cute!