Post Hoc Value

[Mustonen]

What value would you assign to things after you knew what they were worth? There’s a bike rack thread that brought this to mind. What would I pay now for one 90 minute bike ride with my kids when they were at 8, 12, and 13? $1,000? Easy. Most useful context is where and how it drives current and future investment of time, treasure, and talent.

Other Examples:.
- dinner with your mom before dementia ($???)
- listening to your children prattle on as toddlers. ($500)
- reading that facebook ad. ($0.00)

What's yours? Share it so we can benefit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUwjNBjqR-c

[old goat]

I don't think I'd pay anything for those things. The best times happen when you're not paying attention, when you don't realize until later that they were special times.

[Mustonen]

You deny, then, any intentionality around moments that you value? You’ve never looked back and realized that your intentionality or investment was misaligned?

I’m not a big “wish I had a do over” guy. At all. Life is. But I try to anticipate and if I can I pass on a tip to, say, blow off work for that powder day or blow off that powder day to play legos with your son.

[chicken feathers]

There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else theres Mastercard.

[gaijin]

I see where you’re going, Mustonen. But I also hear Old Goat.

And to be completely fair—. Typing those two sentences out on my phone was way more painful than any existential reality should be.

I’ll never transfer money for any event that I could recreate. But I will absolutely pray that I can recognize and appreciate moments that are happening now.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[gaijin]

I just tried to record my daughter playing piano and she told me to fuck off.

So there’s that.

She then switches over to her headphones at which point nobody can hear her play.

The moral of the story is— stop taking pictures and trying to recreate what was once beauty. If you want to hear my piano, put everything down and listen.

I respect that.

[toast2266]

A picture is a nice way to remember what a good time you could have been having if you weren't fucking around with your camera.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

[smmokan]

It’s ironical…. Most people today are so caught up in trying to capture everything on their phones that they miss experiencing those very same moments.

[gravitylover]

I don't have many pictures from stuff I went to and did until I had my own kids. Even then, there aren't nearly as many as most people nowadays. I think that my parents and grandparents took more but for my grandparents it was kind of novel that they could save those memories so I get why there are so many boxes of photos in my dad's house. Unfortunately those aren't my memories so I'll look at them once or twice then toss them. For my kids they're meaningless and so would my life's memories be so it's a good thing I didn't bother.

I'm glad I did all the things I did but never really thought of them as future memories while they were occurring. Would I like a few of those days back? Of course! There are things I didn't do but could have, or is that a time travel conundrum?

[Boissal]

A picture is a nice way to remember what a good time you could have been having if you weren't fucking around with your camera.

It’s ironical…. Most people today are so caught up in trying to capture everything on their phones that they miss experiencing those very same moments.

Weird and mostly disingenuous arguments. I get shitting on the selfie stick crowd and people who GoPro their every move but this luddite attitude reeks of back in the day was better shit. As far as quickly capturing moments while remaining immersed in them today's cell phone camera is gold.

I hike with my daughter a ton, and typically come back with 5-15 pictures per outing. That's what, 5 minutes out of 4 to 6 hours? Under 2% of the time to create snapshots that I can go back to anytime, share with Ms Boissal who was at work, send to the grandparents who live far away, and embarrass the child with down the road. It doesn't take me out of the moment, doesn't diminish the experience, and gives me something more than the fuzzy memory my brain will retain a couple months from now.
Looking at pictures I have from moments captured 10 years ago puts me right back in the action. It literally get transported back to the day and everything comes back into sharp focus. I have plenty of memories that are not documented in images, and my ability to relive these moments is nil. I know the experience happened but it's a closed book and I don't get to reopen it. I see that as a loss and would definitely have $$ to burn on reliving some of these moments.

[Cisco Kid]

I have ski pics of me from 60 years ago and tons pics of skiing my grand kids on the cloud somewhere. Will they be able to find them when they have grandkids?

[Woodsy]

how you spend your time is the focus here.

Spend it wisely.

get/stay fit so you can be present and healthy for all of it

do shit while you can.
I am a very lucky guy and have had a great run so far @ 52 with very few regrets. ONE is not going to summerski Argentina in the early 00s when I could as I had a seasonalish job and no kids to stop me.

That I would pay a lot for to do with my skilegs of my early 30s living in UT
Do shit you wont be able to do later.

[Mustonen]

A picture is a nice way to remember what a good time you could have been having if you weren't fucking around with your camera.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

I don’t take a lot of pictures for those reasons. I snap a photo or two when I think about it.

I framed this poorly…. What I was getting at was assigning value to these experiences or opportunities in such a way as to drive better future investment. I find, as I look back, that each bike ride with my kids at those ages was precious and if I could have spent time or money to increase those experiences, even by 1 or 2, I would not now regret it in the least. I cannot say the same thing for football games I watched from my couch. If I could assign that a value and communicate that value to prior me, I’d have told myself to not think twice about spending $1,000 on travel or some other opportunity, not watching sports for a season, or investing in a better (or even just a shinier) bike for my youngest so she wasn’t a drag on the crew wanting to get out there.

The trick, of course, is projecting that forward in current/future circumstances. Right now, an equivalent value proposition isn’t obvious to me because I don’t have the benefit of looking back. Candidates include taking PTO for days my kids have off school. Taking more trips with my wife. Or maybe spending more time just sitting with my old dogs and petting them. How much would future me pay to spend an hour just petting and playing with my old dogs in a way that I won’t be able to then? Or at the expense of what?

We’re often poor at recognizing these things in the moment, which is why we rely on the wisdom of our elders if we’re gonna have any chance of getting that even a tiny bit more correct.

That’s all. Y’all can keep prattling on about pictures I suppose. It’s at least tangential….

[EWG]

Reminds me of the Dylan song:
"Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat. I'd give it all gladly, if our lives could be like that."

[old goat]

You deny, then, any intentionality around moments that you value? You’ve never looked back and realized that your intentionality or investment was misaligned?

I’m not a big “wish I had a do over” guy. At all. Life is. But I try to anticipate and if I can I pass on a tip to, say, blow off work for that powder day or blow off that powder day to play legos with your son.

I could play Legos with my kid any time if I wanted to. He's 37 and very much still into it. But to me a lego is something you step on barefoot.

I just tried to record my daughter playing piano and she told me to fuck off.

So there’s that.

She then switches over to her headphones at which point nobody can hear her play.

The moral of the story is— stop taking pictures and trying to recreate what was once beauty. If you want to hear my piano, put everything down and listen.

I respect that.

I'm another one who's not into taking pictures. The one year I lived in Tucson I took a lot of pics of the desert and they looked good on the wall until we could afford real art. Other than that I don't take pics unless I'm told to. The only thing worse is posing for them.

[Joe Friday]

I just tried to record my daughter playing piano and she told me to fuck off.

In English or Japanese?

Punks




Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[yeahman]

I've thought about this lately as I watch my kids embarking on adulthood. I think of all the trials and tribulations they have ahead of them, and I've decided I wouldn't live any of my life over again if given the chance, good times or bad. I made my decision about how to live my life when I was 25 and I never really wavered, so...no regrets, and no do-overs desired. So for me the answer to how much is any given experience worth is zero.

I will say this about pictures. I always took a minute to snap a few whenever we did fun stuff with our kids. A couple years ago my wife (who never takes pics) went through them on the computer and picked out 50 of the best. She paid a few hundred bucks to have them made into these 6 x 6 inch wall tiles she saw on a website, and she covered one of the walls in our basement with them. It's really cool. I look at them all the time and so do the kids. It's a great way to have an ever-present physical remembrance of our family life that doesn't require opening a scrapbook or looking at a screen or whatever.