Tick Tock
What is the value of your time?
Dear Friends,
Whether we believe time is a reality of the physical world or an artificial construct of human mentality, we are all bound by its constraints. No matter how much we try to pause, bend, or elongate time by being hyper productive, ignoring it fully, or completely present, we are not able to create more time. We are not able to make or manifest more minutes or hours in the day, nor weeks or months in the year. We can not make or create more time no matter how hard we try or how desperately we want to. It’s just not possible.
Additionally, we do not know how much more time ahead of us we have. Regardless of any metric such as our age, our health, or if we live in a blue zone, we have no guarantee, no idea, no concrete answer as to how much time we have left.
Money on the other hand is a different story. We invented money. Literally, cash is a human construct we devised to buy and sell the goods and services we use to sustain our lives. We also have the ability to change how much money we have. That is to say, we have agency to earn money based on our exchange of intellectual capital or physical labor for compensation. We also choose how much of our money we spend. Additionally, via the Department of Treasury, more money is able to be printed, increasing the amount of money in circulation. Us humans, can and do make money. This is within our control.
Furthermore, we can quantify, at practically any given moment, by looking at our financial statements, how much money we have. So we know, rather easily and concretely, just exactly how much money we have at any given moment.
When considered in this light…that we can make more money and we know exactly how much money we have, whereas regarding time, we can not make more time and we have no idea how much time we have left, we may pause for a moment to consider…What have we been valuing more in our life. Our Time? Or Money?
Where are we focusing our attention more? On money which we can make more of? Or time which is finite for each of us and we are only ever running out of it?
We often hear, or even say ourselves, that “time is money.” However, that quip puts forth the notion that time, in fact, is equal to money. But are the two truly equal? Does that saying hold up or is it modern folklore?
In economics, a limited natural resource in demand is always more valuable than a manufactured resource that is not limited. That is to say, the limited natural resource of time is far more valuable than the manufactured resource of money.
Of course money is important. It is very important. Critically important. We can’t live without it. Not only do we need it for our basic necessities, but we also want it, desire it, to improve our quality of life so that we may enjoy the things we love such as our hobbies, traveling, and hitting the town to dine, take in a concert, or cheer on our favourite sports team, for example. Money is valuable.
Understanding that both time and money are critically important, yet not equal, we want to be thoughtful and consider if the personal value that we have assigned to time and to money are properly weighted in our life? One way to do this is to investigate how we are spending our time. If we don't understand how we spend our time we don't carry any standards for how we will spend our time.
To that end, a few questions we may consider are how much money do we need to meet our needs and our wants in order to be satisfied; are we valuing our pursuit of money over spending time in the ways that are most meaningful to us; what is the opportunity cost, that is to say, what are we forgoing or giving up, in order to pursue making more money? Do we have the right balance between the two? A good dynamic tension, or no?
Another idea to consider is for us to be mindful that when trading our time for money that we are getting paid according to the value of our time. Many variables, including things we have control over such as our education, work ethic, and expertise plus things we do not have control over, such as an economic recession or a tight labour market, go into this calculation. We may also consider how much joy, satisfaction, and meaning we get from the work we trade for our time. These are all highly personal considerations.
What I know for sure is that our time, on this planet, in this life, with those we love, is finite, fleeting, and only dissipating. Yet we forsake so much of our precious time doing things that do not reflect that our time, is in fact, our most treasured resource.
Lastly, at some point in our lives, barring being truly desolate, there very well will come a time when we will have more money than we have time left. I wonder what we will wish we had more of in that moment. More money or more time?
Xoxo ~ WRW
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Thank you Morgan Housel for the cover photography.
Well said. It is not an equal balance sheet, and it becomes more clear as time goes on. I wish time and money were better friends!
Thank you. Like always amazing. Very well written.