How do you value your time?
What does time mean to you? Do you give your time a value?
I am not just speaking about an hourly wage; I am talking about all the hours in your life. Life is full of activities, challenges, distractions, and obstacles every day. Many people feel they could use a “double” to get everything done.
A 2008 Forbes article looks at this dilemma, “Time is the most valuable commodity. We never seem to have enough of it. Everyone is time-strapped, time-poor, time-starved. Choose your cliché. Most of us don’t make the most of our time. We wish we did. A self-help industry has flourished on the hope that even if we can’t make more time–the 24 hours in a day remain immutable–we can at least make the most of what we have. Even the most ardent makers of “to-do” lists fritter time away.
Which raises this question to fill an idle moment: Why don’t we value time as we do any other good or service? We could then decide what we do with ours in the most cost-effective way: rationally maximizing our “return on time invested” (ROTI), if you will.” {Tools for allocating assets}
Ben Franklin said, “Time is Money.” Substitute the word INVESTING for MONEY. Using the word investing as you delegate time may help you to place a higher value on people and experiences. Investing in yourself could be additional education, job training or saving for the future. Investing in relationships could mean scheduling time for valuable activities with family, friends or loved ones. By equating a value to time – it can alter the perspective of your intentions. Being young can give one the sense that everything will last forever, and family and friends will always be there. As people age, many develop a keen sense of time as friends move away or they experience the loss of a cousin, uncle or parent. In retrospect, the personal relationships take on a greater value.
An interesting way to value time is to compare it to a bank account where each person is given 86,400 seconds (dollars) to use each day. Time spent on long-term goals and life-building relations will count more in life. The time lost each night in your account is renewed with a current balance of seconds and minutes to be used again. Consequently, living each day with its sense of promise and possibilities, demands each hour to be lived to the fullest, being “in the present.”
Make space to truly cherish and live – at any particular moment – this week! Celebrate your family, your Mom and those people who you have chosen into your circle of family and loved ones. That is time well spent!
Yesterday is history
Tomorrow is mystery
Today is a gift
That is why it’s called the present!!
-Bob
