What is your time worth?
I want you to think about what your time is worth.
How much time do we have on this earth? Rather, how much time do we think we have?
How do you want to spend that time? Are you already doing exactly what you want to do every day?
Are you living your dream life? Or are there still some things unfinished?
The crazy thing is that we often forget to think about our lives this way because we just don’t have time… a concept that is sort of ironic.
I want to share a conversation I had with my brother when he was getting ready to wash his car
I asked him…
“How long is it going to take you to do that? A few hours right? Don’t you have other things you have to get done today?”
To which he replied “Ya, but that will cost me money. I can wash it for free.”
It really hit me… he was willing to spend a few hours on his day off washing his car just to save a few bucks.
Now I am not saying there is anything wrong with washing your car yourself. There are a lot of people that actually enjoy it! Especially on a hot day . Getting out there and relaxing… doing something other than being in the office. I get it. It can be a source of joy.
But if it is a task for you, and there are other things to do...you probably need to rethink your concept of time vs. money.
This is what I want to talk about today. Investing your time or money up front for a return. And considering opportunity cost when it comes to making decisions about time in your life.
That might sound all fancy but let me explain… with the rest of the story…
After he said he could wash it for free… I was like… “Ok. I get that. But how much is your time worth to you?”
He stopped in his tracks and looked at me puzzled. like, he never even considered this part of the equation. I went on to ask how much he earned per hour at work. I already knew it was more than the cost of the car wash.
“So technically… you could pay someone to wash your car, and go to work for that hour… and turn a profit, right?”
With that, he tossed the sponge on the ground and was like “Oh snap. You are right! I never thought about it that way.”
The point is, you choose how you spend every minute of your day and they are limited. It is worth evaluating what your time is worth to you.
Some people get smart with this and invest in their time. What I mean is when you are seeking a certain end result, you can invest two ways. You can spend time up front, and save the money for later. Or you can spend money up front and save the time for later. Sometimes what path we choose depends on the journey.
I might spend 6 months knitting a sweater because I like knitting sweaters. There is joy in the journey, sometimes just as much as the result — having a nice sweater when it gets cold. But if I don’t like knitting, it’s worth it for me to go down to kohl’s and spend 50 bucks on a sweater that I can have right now.
This is the time vs money concept. Sometimes it is how people with more money can get ahead faster because they are able to invest more money in what they need to accomplish a task, freeing up time to do other things, whereas everyone else has to put in that time investment.
This highlights the concept of opportunity cost — when you can pay somebody that’s an expert to do it quickly and more efficiently than you could. And your time can be spent doing something else.
For that matter, if I had to knit a sweater right now, I would literally have to spend 6 months learning how to do it!
A pretty famous quote I have heard so many times I am not even sure where it originated from is …”Do what you do best and outsource the rest”
Translated into my life, that means
“If it isn’t something you can do efficiently, enlist the help of others to get it done. Save your time for later.”
One of my favorite examples of this is at the DMV. Let’s say you are standing at DMV. Pre-COVID, of course. Its super busy — lunch time. Everyone and their mom is at the DMV to renew their registration because of course it expires for everyone in the state at the same time, it seems, and its right when you need to go.
There’s not even enough chairs for everyone. So you and 10 others are just standing by the wall waiting for your number to be called. You get that feeling of excitement — that rush every time they announce a new number hoping it will be you.
“Now serving D256 at window number 7”
Nope. It’s not you. The rush of excitement turns into rage. “Wait…256…? I’m 387. What the…?! I’m going to be here all day!” *insert sigh of devastation*
Back to holding up the wall.
Then you think to yourself… “ I would totally pay that dude 20 bucks for his seat right now”
Ah ha! There’s the magic.
That chair is free! There is no value to that chair. But now that you are suffering, the chair has a higher perceived value in your life. And maybe at some point, the value of that chair continues to increase as your suffering becomes worse.
This highlights the fact that there is no connection between time and space and money. It doesn’t exist. We just have a perception of their connection. A perception of what they’re worth at any given time.
Same thing if you pay your kid 5 bucks to do the dishes. It’s worth it because you get that time back. They learned a lesson about actually earning money for their effort. Maybe even the value of 5 bucks is different for you and for the kid.
So why do we care about all this time investment and opportunity cost stuff today?
The point is when we think about living our best life, we need to consider what we are doing with our time. How we are investing it. What changes we might need to make in order to get where we are trying to go and ultimately be happy.
Taking a step forward, and making a decision that will start us down the right path and get us to the end goal — out of pain — as quickly as possible.
Sometimes its meal prep on Sunday to save time during the week, for some it is fitness or relationship coaching to keep you accountable and point you in the right direction. To help you communicate better with your spouse. It might even be … hell… I am wasting my time in this relationship. I gotta’ just get out!
Oftentimes, the push back is… that…well time investments can sometimes feel like “oh no, I don’t have time for that” but that’s why we call it an investment. Because it actually saves you time or money later. A financial investment is something that is intended to save you time later. Or maybe even in many cases save you time right now!
So I encourage you to consider what your time is worth. What you can outsource to get some of that time back. What opportunity costs might you be missing out on? What results are you willing to pay for to achieve more quickly?
We always say… “let’s go, I don’t have all day!” but the crazy thing is that we do have all day! We just elect to not spend all day doing whatever the heck is holding us up at that particular moment.
So really consider what this means to you. And how you can start reshaping your day to include what gets you closer to your goals.
For links to my favorite books and some free resources that have helped me out on this journey, you can go to my website at resources.zenyourmindnow.com
