It’s the Experiences, Stupid

Most of my college classmates likely make more money than I do. Most of my law school classmates almost certainly make much more money than I do.

Yet I’m almost certain that none of them have had dinner with David Fritts. Or fished with Kevin VanDam. Or been stuck on a mud bar with Paul Elias at 7 am on a cold November day.

Most of them, of course, don’t know who those three people are. That fact notwithstanding, they likely have not had comparable experiences in their own field of interest. Maybe they’ve been on a private jet or attended a rave in St. Bart’s or a corporate board meeting run by the Masters of the Universe, and they may be happy about that, but by comparison, it just feels so mundane compared to what I’ve had the good fortune to experience over a life in fishing. As I read somewhere recently, A day on the water is a wasted day, but a life on the water is a life well-lived.

I thought about that this past Saturday as I fished with my longtime friend and mentor Bill Roberts. We fished out of my boat, which still makes me nervous because when I’m around him I feel like the 25 year old fishing newbie I was when we first met. But then the stories rolled, and despite the dangers of nostalgia, we had fun recounting the many stories: the dinner with Fritts and Chet Douthit and David and Carla Wharton in 1997; a tournament fog delay at Toledo Bend in 2003; his co-angler experience with A-Mart at the California Delta in 2007; and various characters we’d known over the years. You can’t just be an 80-hour-a-week executive who fishes twice a year and expect to have that storehouse of memories and experiences. I’ve seen some absolutely crazy stuff, and met an incredibly wide range of people, and I can’t imagine that I’d trade it for anything.

And while I’m not usually expressly in the advice-giving business, here’s what I’ll tell those of you who have fewer than my 53 years of living under your belts – time management is the hardest skill in life. As the cliché tells us, no matter how rich, lucky or good-looking you may be, you don’t get more than 24 hours in a day, and it’s up to you to figure out how to spend them. Likewise, most of us have work obligations and family obligations that dig into those hours. Therein lies the conundrum for me – I get a limited amount of vacation per year. I treasure it and baby it and work my hardest to maximize it. Generally, I like to spend it fishing. Yet over the course of the last nearly two decades, I’ve covered 17 Bassmaster Classics as a member of the media, at an average of a week of vacation per Classic. Add in other media trips, covering various Opens, PAA events, and so on, and you’re looking at over half a year of pure vacation days. Those could have been lots of great fishing trips around the country or around the world. Yet, for the most part, I watched others fish. Sure, I generally got paid for it, but the dollars involved were not commensurate with the time I had to give up.

So why did I do it? There are two primary reasons: The first is that the Classics themselves were capital-E-events. On multiple occasions, I was the person closest to the winning angler when he caught the fish that pushed him over the top. As a burgeoning creative, that gave me the license to tell that story, and that’s a gift unto itself. Second, the time I’ve spent at those events is an “experience multiplier” – by getting my name out there in a way that “bass club Pete” never could, and gaining some small level of traction in the industry, it’s given me the opportunity to fish with people, and in places, that I otherwise never could.

You might not choose to spend your time the same way, but if you’re an angler at some point you’re going to have to make choices. Treat your time like it’s the most valuable resource that you have, because it is.