20th October 2023 / Written by Alex
Category: Mindset
Imagine you had scheduled a meeting with someone and the person just didn't show up. You waited 5, 10 or more minutes but still, nobody shows up. Now, if you value your time the other person didn't. And this is crucial. Doesn't matter if it's a colleague, a friend or family member. If you've agreed on meeting and the other person doesn't show he or she just gives zero f*cks about your time. And now imagine you paid someone to receive a service and that person isn't showing up? That person doesn't even value your time but he or she doesn't value your money as well because you get nothing in exchange. Ok, don't get me wrong. I know, sometimes life gets in the way and you can't make it to an appointment. That's fine but there is still a difference between not showing up without notice and telling the other one about it early enough. How old are you? Have you ever thought about your time deeply? Have you ever thought about the number 86.400?
Do you remember your early 20s? Or maybe you are in your early 20s right now. How does time feel to you? When we're young time seems almost infinite and we're full of energy and life. But as we get older our perception of time changes more and more. As a child an hour can feel like an eternity. As a mid-30-year-old an hour just flies by. The older we get the faster time seems to run. That's due to our relative perception of time. For a 5-year-old one year is one fifth of his life. For a 50-year-old one year is one fiftieth of his life. The fractions get smaller and smaller. Additionally, our brains make fewer and fewer new memories which also adds to the perception of time. A child makes lots and lots of new memories whereas an older person doesn't. Days where we experience new things that don't happen every day feel longer in retrospect than days that are just like others. That's why you may remember your birthday party that happened a couple of months ago very well but you have a hard time recalling what happened last week on Tuesday night.
Back to 86.400! That's the number of seconds you get each day. Every day at midnight your counter runs out and resets. And there will be a day when your counter just stops. It won't run out, it won't reset, it just stops. That's the moment you die. But we don't care about that when we're young. As mentioned above, time seems infinite to us when we're young. Something that we have in abundance has no value to us and we tend to waste it. That's why older people think that younger people waste their time with videogames, social media etc. If you want to transform you need to change your mindset about time. Think of it this way. Imagine I gave you a magic wallet and that every day you woke up you had $864 in your wallet. But if you didn't spend all the money then what's left would vanish on midnight. And the next day you had another $864 in your magic wallet. I would also tell you that one day your magic wallet will stop filling up again but I can't tell you when that day is. What would you do? Would you try to spend all the money each day before it was gone or would you let most of it go to waste and vanish on midnight? Probably the first, right? But maybe you get my point already. Most people let their time go to waste. They keyword here is meaning! When you get older you realize you can either use your time for meaningful things that have an impact on your life or you could spend hours playing casual games on your phone while watching the current reality show that's "so hot right now". Don't be shocked. Of course, you need downtime from time to time. I'm talking about the majority of your time. How do you spend the majority of your time? Do you spend it on meaningful things or do you let your time go to waste? Pooof! Gone.
Time is money! Or money is time? There are people who would wait one hour in line for a free hamburger that costs $2 or people who'd drive 20 minutes to a gas station where they save $1 on their refill. If you were to ask these people to work the same amount of time for the money they saved on burgers and gas they’d decline. They don't understand that they exchange their time for money on their jobs as well. They exchange 1 hour of their time waiting in line for the value of 2$, yet they wouldn’t work an hour to gain 2$. Why? Two things are at play here.
Number one: We're conditioned to accept exchanging our time at a "job" for money. That's how things are. That's how we learn it to be from being a child up until adulthood. That's why these people would wait in line but won't work for $2. Next time you buy yourself something nice for $100 or you are about to save $2 try think about the time you need to work in order to make the money. Is the new pair of sneakers worth working 4-5 hours for? Is waiting an hour in line to save $2 when you earn that money at work in 1-3 minutes? This also means that the more money you make the more valuable your time becomes. Do you think someone who makes 50 grand a month would wait in line for an hour?
Number two: Studies have shown that we declare the loss of a dollar to be 2.5x as impactful as the gain of a dollar. This was done by estimating the average amount of money people needed to be able to win in order to risk a certain amount of dollars. And the average multiple was 2.5x. This means most people would risk $100 when they could win $250 in a scenario with 50/50 odds. Where does this come from? Evolution! If you have worked hard to gain a resource, you'd try to keep it whatever it takes. That's why people exchange one hour of their time so they can keep their $2 but won't work an hour to gain $2. The relation is different here but the concept is the same. Now, imagine you consider time as your most important resource instead of money. You'd decide a lot of things differently. Wasting an hour of your life will hurt way more than spending an hour on meaningful things. After all, you can never get back your time that you've wasted but you can always earn more money.
When you realize that your wasted time is lost forever it sucks. You just can't buy time. I know, when you're rich, about to die and you need expensive treatment your money will "buy" you some time. But time is not bought directly only indirectly. You can't go to the store and buy another day or an entire week. That'd be great though. You can pay for treatment hoping you'll get healthy again. If your time runs out your counter stops. That's it. You see, money can only indirectly buy you more time. But it can also do something else. It can leverage your time. If you need to clean your house or your apartment and you're able to pay someone to do that for you, you've leveraged your time. This will allow you to spend your time on meaningful and impactful things in your life, your family, your hobbies, your work, your creativity. And no, playing candy crush on your couch while stuffing Cheetos in your mouth and watching the Kardashians is not a hobby!
Did you get the whole point of this? Alphas value their time to be their most important resource. Money is second. It can't buy time but it can solve 99% of your problems.
Stay Awesome
Alex