One day, well spent

Here's why the two minutes matter at work, on the days the job tries hardest to swallow you whole. The double shift, the broken machine, the customer line out the door — those days feel infinite while you're in them and vanish the second they end. You can give a whole day like that to the work and have nothing of it left that was yours.

Marcus Aurelius, running an empire, kept the proportion in front of him: "How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is assigned to every man, for it is very soon swallowed up in the eternal!" He drew the practical conclusion in the next breath — "consider nothing to be great, except to act as thy nature leads thee" (Meditations 12.32, Long). The day is small. That's exactly why it's worth aiming. You don't get many, and this one isn't coming back.

The morning minute claims the day before the job does. The evening minute confirms you actually spent it, instead of letting it be spent on you. Two minutes are how a worker keeps possession of a day the work would otherwise take whole.

A small part of boundless time was assigned to you today. Spend it like you noticed.