I am a fraud. Well, today I am.
I have the house to myself - bar the dog - and I'm faffing around. So much for extolling the virtues of being mindful and using time wisely.
The umbilical cord joining me to my son has been temporarily detached, as he's out. And what am I doing? Writing intelligent copy? Dealing with receipts I have emptied onto my desk so I can see where spending is headed? Or just taking time out for a bath?
Nope. I'm surfing the net and time is trickling by. Not exactly decluttering my mind, never mind my surroundings.
It's so easy, isn't it, just sitting there, clicking away? Before you know it, five hours and six minutes have ticked by. That's the average time spent on the internet every day by people living in the UAE - if we extrapolate the findings from We Are Social's Digital, Social and Mobile Worldwide report for 2015, which came out at the start of the year - or three hours and 48 minutes if you're using a mobile device.
It could be argued that a chunk of that time is work-related. True. But the internet users surveyed spent two hours and four minutes watching TV each day and three hours and 35 minutes on social media - up from three hours and 17 minutes last year.
That's a lot of time. My point is that we do have time in our life, but we don't use it to serve our best interests and it's costing us. Literally.
So how about paying attention to how we use our time. Or, how about paying for our time and our attention?
Instead of just consuming time - like I did surfing the web - allocate a value to it.
Some things will cost you, others will enrich you. Let's think in lots of 30 minutes.
In my case, surfing the web cost me Dh50 (is that all my time's worth? What figure would you put on your half-hour?). But going through my receipts would enrich me by, say, Dh100 - because the knowledge I'd gain from doing it is very important.
How about it? Create your own mini-economy. Put a value on how you spend your time and attention.
First you need to pay attention to what you do, and how long you do it for. Then figure out how it enriches your life, or detracts from it.
Next, change how you spend your time to make your life better. This must include time allocated to look at your finances.
You probably schedule in time for watching TV and don't even realise how much time you spend on social media - yet you don't have any set aside to review your budget, spending and statements.
Do you know how much better off you'd be if you did that? It's not just the few hundred dirhams saved here and there by cancelling unused subscriptions, or the thousands saved on a mortgage that works more in your favour - just knowing what's going on in your financial life is worth a lot. I'd give that half-hour a monetary worth of Dh500.
An hour a week. That's all I'm suggesting. An hour a week that is scheduled and stuck to, compared with the more than 14 hours you might be spending watching TV.
Our modern day complaint is that we are increasingly time-poor. But there are things that we can do with the time that we have outside of dedicated work-hours to improve our lives. Personally, I'd include a digital detox hour a day - when you walk in from work and greet your family - as well as a weekly financial review. What else would you schedule to make your life better? Think about it, then do it.
I am Dh100 in the red with my pointless surfing today. Time now to refocus and tackle receipts one by one. I'm "paying" myself Dh200 for the hour I think it'll take, which means that I'll be Dh100 better off as long as I get it done.
Get yourself a nice small notebook and keep a tally of how you spend your time, and give it a dirham value. I'm sure you'll be surprised by what you discover.
Wasting time is wasting money. Actually no, it's far worse - you can make money back, but not time. It's gone. Forever.
Nima Abu Wardeh is the founder of the personal finance website cashy.me. You can reach her at nima@cashy.me and find her on Twiiter at @nimaabuwardeh
Price of laziness is higher than you think
Keep a tally of how you spend your day to really understand the value of time, writes Nima Abu Wardeh.
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