I hope you have time for this. It is a long read (hopefully timely for you).
1. Do you appreciate time enough?
People like talking about how busy they are as if it is a sign of success. Perhaps it is for some, but for most of us, it is a just a sign of being out of control.
Lack of time = lack of priorities.
It’s not about time, it’s about priorities.
“Those who cannot appreciate time have the most money problems.” – Benjamin Franklin
2. Time vs money
An illogical way in which we value the two commodities time and money:
An abundance of money is considered a status symbol, while an abundance of time is considered shameful.
Is that why there’s a premium on busyness – on having a deficit of time?
Why are we so willing to trade in our time for money when time is limited but money is not?
“Give time a higher value as compared to money. Earning more money generally means having less time for what might be more valuable.” – Alexander Trost, author
3. Trading time for money
When we work, we’re giving away our time to someone else to use our skills & our knowledge, in exchange for money.
How much are you worth?
How precious is your time?
Make sure you’re given the proper amount of compensation for your time.
If you want to be worth more, look at what you need to do to make yourself worth more. Do a job that adds value to the organization or the society & then match passion with that sense of purpose.
“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” – Carl Sandburg, author
4. Work is about money
I always thought work was about making money.
Now I see work as a means of buying time & spending it on the things that matter to me.
Having time feels far better than buying more stuff ever did. Buying stuff means having to always invest my time in working, rather than living life.
Try it.
This small shift in thinking could make you earn money & spend it differently.
Let me give you an example. Buying a $50,000 car equals approximately one year‘s worth of living expenses for me. Do I buy a giant chunk of metal that brings me no joy or do I buy a years’ worth of time to not work, do some writing, read a few books & spend with my family & friends?
“You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, but what you spend your time on.” – Andy G. Schmidt
5. Make time
There is always a way to “make time” once your priorities are clear.
No one says: How do you have time to eat? How do you have time to sleep or have sex?
How many people have lamented on their deathbeds: “I wish I had spent more time at the office!”?
“Life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time.” – George Carlin, comedian
6. Time scarcity
If feelings of time-scarcity stem in part from the sense that time is highly valuable, then, perhaps one of the best things we could do to reduce this sense of pressure might be to give our time away.
Indeed, new research suggests that giving time away to help others can actually lessen feelings of time scarcity.
Even giving up a few hours of a paycheck to volunteering may have more bang for your buck in making you feel happier.
People who volunteer their time are happier, healthier & live longer.
One study even found that volunteering time makes people feel like they have more of it. Perhaps because giving away time boosts one’s sense of personal competence & efficiency.
Have you experienced any positive effect that “giving time away” or “slowing down” had on your personal feelings of time scarcity?
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” — William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania
7. Guard your time
You can easily regain control of your life by simply making more conscious decisions on how you spend your time & then acting in line with your values.
In other words, be your own person.
“People are frugal in guarding their personal property, but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” – Seneca, Roman philosopher
8. The only time is NOW
It’s extremely hard to be happy when you spend most of your time hustling or worrying about the past or living in fear of the future.
We are too busy worried about the past & the future that we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved & unseized.
Practicing mindfulness is growing. Its growth is an evolution from the results-driven workplace. There are too many distractions at the expense of focus & productivity.
You can only live one moment at a time, choose to live in the moment.
Living in the moment — also called mindfulness — is a state of active, open, intentional attention on the present.
Living in the moment isn’t simply an absence of productivity; it’s a feeling with its own inherent value. It can lead us to new ideas, even something as simple as remembering to call an old friend.
Or the realization that our time here on earth is short & demands to be lived one conscious moment at a time.
But don’t think too much about “enjoying” life. The moment you jump to “thinking mode” & seek things to make your life fulfilling, the fullness of life will become a mirage.
“We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.” – Winnie the Pooh
9. We are busy a l l o f t h e t i m e
Or are we just pretending to be?
Productivity obsession has knit itself into our cultural fabric.
It shouldn’t have taken a global pandemic to snap us out of our hustle tunnel vision, but here we are.
We are in it.
Slowing down might feel uncomfortable right now.
That’s exactly why it’s necessary.
We feel guilty if we’re not working.
That’s exactly why we must live in the moment.
We can’t grind our way out.
That’s exactly why we must pause & tend to our feelings instead of our output.
Could now be your time to take your life back?
What do you control here?
“My only measure of success is how much time I have to kill.” – Nassim Taleb, risk analyst (among many other professions)
10. We all have the same amount of time in a day
Time is the one asset where everyone is on equal footing. This makes time management one of the most important aspects of creating a life with as little stress as possible.
Yet time management is like personal finance — it can have an enormous impact on your well-being but nobody teaches you how to do it.
Time is precious & valuable. More valuable than money.
“Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.” – James Clear, author of Atomic Habits
11. Time is irretrievable
Time is the only element in the world that is irretrievable when it’s lost.
Lose money & you can make more.
Lose a job & you can find another.
But lose time & it’s gone forever.
“For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
12. Time is your friend, or not
Oops, almost forgot this an investment oriented blog:
Where returns are concerned, time is your friend.
But where costs are concerned, time is your enemy (eg. Credit card debts or mortgages longer than 15 years).
The great thing is you still have plenty of time if you’re in your 30s. You have many decades ahead of you to allow compounding to do the heavy monetary lifting.
Time is your greatest asset as a young person.
The earlier you start investing your money, the more time you have for two important factors to surface: compounding can begin to work its magic & the odds of success can be firmly placed in your favour.
“Timing the market is a fool’s game, whereas time in the market is your greatest natural advantage.” – Nick Murray, investor & financial advisor
13. Is there more time pressure?
“Time pressure” seems to be on the rise in these modern times.
Initially, I thought that I knew the answer to this; the pace of life accelerating, with people working more & relaxing less than they did twenty years ago.
At least, that was the impression I got from the mass media.
Digging deeper into some research I found however that there is very little evidence that people nowadays work more – and relax less – than they did in earlier decades. In fact, some of the studies suggest just the opposite.
If you actually work longer hours than your parents did, you are an outlier.
So, why do we report feeling so pressed for time, then?
The answer is simply supply & demand.
As time becomes more valuable, time is seen as scarcer. And scarcity & value are perceived as conjoined twins.
Surveys around the world have shown that people with higher incomes report feeling more pressed for time, though there are other plausible reasons for this, including the fact that the affluent often work longer hours, leaving them with less free time.
The alarming part of one study, however, is that by simply perceiving oneself as affluent might be sufficient to generate feelings of time pressure.
With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have. – Mitch Albom, author
14. Having enough time
People who value time over money tend to be happier, according to multiple studies.
People who value time make decisions based on meaning versus money.
They choose to do things because they want to, not because they have to.
Then why is the sense of “having enough time” at an all-time low?
“You can have anything you want, but not everything.” – Laura Lang, businesswoman
15. Time is limited but money is not
Let’s first understand a crucial difference between them: As a personal commodity, money is extremely elastic, in that you can theoretically accumulate an infinite amount of it.
Time, by contrast, is intrinsically inelastic: You cannot accumulate more of it & you’ve never had any less of it.
You and I, we get the same amount of minutes & hours in every day of our life.
So, shouldn’t an hour be much more valuable than a dollar?
Yet we consistently behave as if the opposite were true.
For example: Would you accept a new job with a 20 percent higher salary if it meant a 25 percent longer workweek or a 50 percent longer commute? If so, you are valuing your monetary affluence over your time affluence.
I observe here in Singapore there’s a premium on busyness – on having a deficit of time.
Why are we so willing to trade in our time for money when time is limited but money is not?
“You can have anything you want, maybe even everything, just not all at once.” – Niklas Goeke
16. Now is the time …
… to focus on what is within our control & ignore that stuff that is outside of our control.
I am really enjoying this process. It is giving me clarity on how many things I have been focusing on that are not in my control.
I do have a choice where I spend and invest my time.
I ask myself, are these activities & situations nourishing my energy or draining it?
Only you will know the answer to this.
Half of happiness is being okay with what you can’t change!
“Now is your best moment because there is no other moment!” – Lenny Ravich, author
Thoughts?
Instead of ending his thoughts with exclamation marks, James Altucher uses question marks. “This coffee sucks!” becomes “This coffee sucks?”
Try this exercise. Your brain will immediately look for reasons why your situation isn’t so bad. It’ll come up with comparisons that make you feel grateful rather than grumpy – all while you’re brainstorming ideas on how to change what’s happening & how to use your time.
Curious to read your views on the timeless conflict
between time vs money.
