Seneca, a Roman philosopher who tutored and then advised the emperor Nero, wrote this line near the start of his essay On the Shortness of Life. It sounds like a complaint about mortality. It is a complaint about bookkeeping.

His target was not the lazy. It was the busy — people who guarded every coin and gave their hours to anyone who asked.

That is still the leak.

Nobody wastes a life in one afternoon. It goes in slices small enough to feel free.

The standing Tuesday call that stopped having an agenda in March. The group chat you answer within a minute. The favour you agreed to because saying no felt rude.

None of these feel like spending. Each one takes a piece of a week you will not get back, and you never see the total.

Your bank would never let a stranger take money out without a record. Your calendar lets anyone do it daily.

Run the count. An hour a day handed to things you would not choose again comes to about 365 hours a year — nine working weeks, gone without a line on any statement.

The fix is not a better productivity app. It is treating time the way you already treat money: you ask who is taking it, and you say no to some of them.

So today: open this week's calendar and find one recurring slot you would not book if it were offered to you fresh. Cancel it before noon, with one honest sentence.

Your life was long enough. You just kept lending it out.