You must have heard the old proverb. “Time is Money”. I grew up in a family where everyone was busy doing their stuff, all day, till they went sleeping. When ever I wanted to spend time with them, I was always told to concentrate on my studies and not to waste time, because..”Time is money”.
Now if I see my family and their financial situation, they didn’t really make a lot of money. While living after-retirement life, they are in a cost cutting mode.
What went wrong? If I quiz my dad or my uncle, they will probably say they didn’t invest and save their money wisely. Although, we weren’t raised in an affluent life style. We never wore designer cloths, we had less toys and sports gears compared to our friends. We never took more than one vacation in a year. We were a middle class family always struggling to live.
To me, the probable cause was lack of financial planning, or lack of time to plan for future. Time is money, even though, was the buzz word, it was not interpreted or implemented the way it should have been. My parents did the same mistake most of American families do. Not planning enough for future and not eliminating time waste from life on tasks that were not required to be attempted.
More time should be devoted not only to earn money, but also, to plan for its use and growth. The time you devote to profitable work determines the amount of money you have. Time you put for planning investment and budgeting determines how far can you stretch your money.
If you go for shopping two times a day, second time just to use a coupon, then it’s not really a money-saving task, it is a money waste rather.
Time management is an essential skill that all of us need to learn to maximise our potential as a money earner or income generator. What is most important in time management is how we use the maximum time for maximum profitable work.
If you list your money generating work, or the work which gives you raise or promotion, you could find different work, from writing reports to coding a software program. Now try to determine how much percentage of your total work time is spent on these tasks.
One important rule for this exercise, do not count your entire time at work as a money earning activity. On average, Americans we work for 50% of time during work hours. We do something else for 40% of our time in office. Below is the statistics from Salary.com (published in 2007)
Personal internet use (34%), socializing with co-workers (20.3%) and conducting personal business (17%) are the leading time-wasting activities at work.
Time can be spent even outside work to earn money. To get bigger salary increment, you need time to learn new skills, you need to finish more tasks. You need to allocate time for budgeting your spending, you can earn more money from your investments by researching on better options with higher returns.
But, the big question is, do you have that time? Most of us don’t we all are already busy with our lives. So, what’s the solution? The only way is to eliminate unproductive work from our lives.
Unless you start working on time management from right at this moment and eliminate non productive tasks, most of your wishes shall stay just that, ‘wishes’!
Our grand parents, and up to a great extent our parents too, did not have to update their Facebook account daily, didn’t have to talk or text for hours everyday on their cell phones.
They didn’t have internet, they had a lot of time on hand. They enjoyed their lives, they enjoyed what nature had to offer. It’s scientifically proven fact that if you allow your brain and body to relax in nature, it gets rejuvenated for future challenges and money earning activities. It’s essential to be happy, for you to be rich.
Technical innovations made our day-to-day life a lot easier, no doubt. While Siri on my iPhone made my life faster, the Netflix subscription makes me spend more time watching movie. We gasp for a little time. How often do you find time to think about yourself? How often you find yourself with nothing to do?
To be rich in life
You need time to find ways of saving money. You need time to earn money, you need time to research on spending, you need time to find new ways to invest, you need time to enjoy life to rejuvenate yourself. You need time to be with family and spend time with them so that you don’t lose sight of actual goals, seeing your family happy and being loved.
Tip – Don’t spend time opening junk mails. Put junk mail right into the trash. Do not read junk mail folder in your e-mail service either, simply delete them. You can save average one minute per mail.
“Organizations loose around $1,250 per user in annual productivity because of time spent dealing with spam” – IT Business Edge |
The world is a busy place. I find that I waste time when I sit down to the computer to just take care of a few things. The minutes I thought I would take somehow turn into hours. When I do need to take a “mental break” I find that just sitting outside enjoying the view helps clear my mind and I again can focus.
Yes, that’s a time waster, I waste my time by continuously refreshing Word press stat to check on latest visitor number, just to name one waster. The sooner we focus on the most important stuff the better we will be.
Time is the one non-renewable resource we all have. Best to use each and every day to the best advantage. Nice post.
Thank you Centavos.
Honestly, I’m on Facebook for like 10-15 minutes about 2-3 times a week. You don’t need to spend hours on social media. I also text people but I don’t spend hours doing so. Anyone who spends hours on Facebook and texting doesn’t know how to manage time very well.
We have the same amount as our grandparents did, some people are better organized than others and don’t waste their time on pointless things. Life is as busy as you make it.