Time is the real treasure and for some of us is sadly cut short, money should be secondary. Here are 5 reasons why I think time is more important than money...
We never seem to have enough time, even though we spend so much of it trying to earn money! There’s a common perception that the more time we have, the more money we can make. However, I believe that we’re all looking at time the wrong way… I have been promising myself for as long as I can remember that I would run my business on a 4 day working week. However, I work from my office at home and found little separation between work and non work time, with work often overflowing into my precious family time. When I sat and thought about it I came up with 5 reasons that time is more important than money. This helped me make the necessary adjustments to give myself back that precious time...
1. Time is finite, you can’t make more!
However, you can always make more money one way or another. We can sell some possessions or even win some money on a bet or scratch card. There’s no way to make more time, unless someone figures out how to create a time machine! We may live to a hundred or have our life cut short - this is worth remembering, especially in terms of friends and family and quality time you spend with them.
2. You can be more productive in a day off than with a day’s pay.
Regardless of your job, a day’s pay is the same to every person. Yes, the amounts will be different, and the spending power will therefore differ, but it’s finite and limited. However, in a day off - the possibilities are endless. You are able to do no end of things; the world is your oyster. You could finally get around to doing something you’ve been putting off, take up a hobby you’ve all wanted to do or even visit a friend. Nine times out of ten, the ‘thing’ that costs money will never compete with an experience that makes you happy or gives you a different state of mind.
3. How many more memories does time create than money?
If you think back to your best memories, how many of those are money based and how many of them are of times with friends and family? Yes, money helps and sometimes it facilitates those memories with friends and family to take place. Time provides the memories we look back on with strong emotions, although money helps us achieve this it’s not what we remember.
4. What’s the use in money if you don’t have time?
Billionaires may have enough money to last for 10 lifetimes, but they only have one lifetime to spend it. Most people in the latter years of their life just wish they had more time to spend with friends and family rather than ‘I wish I had more money’.
5. Time creates more happiness than money.
A recent survey asked participants what they believe brings them greater happiness, free time or free money? Over 50% answered with happiness. A lot of the questions were indirect, such as ‘would you prefer a luxury apartment with a long commute to work or a cheaper apartment with a short commute?
It just show how important time is to all of us.
Having the 5 reasons that time is the most important thing we have I had to come up with a strategy to ensure I stick to my 4 day working week. The first thing I’ve done is change the way I handle emails. I have taken the bold step of removing my business emails from my mobile phone, that was a big one for me but has been so cathartic. I put an out of office message on my emails explaining this and all my clients understand I will reply when I am back in the office. Now I don’t spend my evenings and weekends seeing emails popping up on my phone I can relax. My office hours are on my email footer so each time I email anyone they are reminded of my opening times and even if they are emailing me outside of those hours they don’t expect a response until I am back in the office.
The next thing is the mobile phone, I only have one mobile, I didn’t fancy the thought of carrying two around. So I have set up focus profiles, during working hours all calls are allowed, after work the focus changes automatically to friends and family and these are the only calls that ring. Anyone else who calls out of hours goes straight through to voicemail which explains the office is closed and when it’ll be open again. I have set up WhatsApp in a similar way.
Lastly, I have bought some branded workwear, this of course is good when networking however I wear it daily during office hours. The simple act of changing at the end of the working day gives me the feeling of separation from the office which is so difficult to achieve when working from home.
I’d be interested to hear what strategies you adopt to achieve your work life balance.
