100 Marbles: A Competition between Yesterday You and New You
Let’s play a game. It’s New You against …. Yesterday You. New You and Yesterday You each get 100 marbles to play with. Each marble represents one unit of time, attention, effort, and energy.
The object of this game is to come closest to achieving the ambitious, long-term vision that New You and Yesterday You share. The way each invests his 100 marbles will determine his progress towards the vision.
Oh, and there’s a catch - this game isn’t fair. Only New You is allowed to invest his marbles in any way he wishes. Yesterday You, on the other hand, must stick with his marbles’ current allocation, forever. And New You is allowed to peek at Yesterday You’s game plan before creating his own.
Questions to ponder:
1. If this game truly existed, and you wanted to win, would you choose to be New You, or Yesterday You?
2. And as New You, how would you allocate your 100 marbles differently than Yesterday You to defeat him? To bury him?
So, what are you waiting for?
After all, this game DOES exist. And you have no choice about whether or not to compete. Get ready, because New You vs. Yesterday You begins tomorrow morning, at the moment you wake up.
How will you invest New You’s 100 Marbles to win the game?
Rob Crawford, a school administrator who loves baseball and acoustic guitars, writes on productivity, impact, and happiness at Crawdaddy Cove.
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Comments
Manny says on January 22nd, 2007 at 8:12 pm
A poetic and insightful post. I often wonder if the “me” of 30 years ago would be proud of where “we” ended up after all of “his” hard work.
Michael says on January 22nd, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Great post. I like the concept. There was something before about having $86,400 to spend every day. You could do with it whatever you want, but whatever you didn’t spend by midnigh was gone. At that time you would get anohter $86,400. That is $1 per second. I like your method better.
Michael
Chris says on January 23rd, 2007 at 6:13 am
Great, I can win this game easy.
I will choose to be Yesterday Me and shoot myself in the head at the stroke of midnight.
From midnight onwards whatever I do today as Yesterday Me will always beat whatever Today Me (with brains spattered over carpet) manages to achieve (mostly decomposition, I imagine).
Stephen says on March 14th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Oh, Chris. Life is not a Zero-sum game.