My friend Willy was complaining to me the other day that he does not think he will have enough money for retirement. He has a decent income, a good standard of living, and a lot of creature comforts that are supported by his current income. He would like to continue enjoying that life style when the current income stream ends upon his retirement. He wondered aloud, "how do I get more for my retirement?"
Now I'm no financial wizard for sure, but I responded with what most would suggest, "invest more and more wisely."
If we want a nice nest egg later on, we cannot spend all that we earn. We have to save a little and invest it wisely so that our "Golden Years" are truly golden. Everyone seems to understand this basic financial principle. Most people are investing some of their money for the future.
What many do not seem to understand is that the same principle applies to an equally precious resource, our time.
You want more productivity out of your time in the future? You have to shift the ratio from "expense" to "investment". And, why should we be concerned about the future? Because that's where we will be spending the rest of our lives.
In fact, our time is a more precious resource than our money. Where does money come from? For most of us, money comes to us as a direct result of how we spend our time. Yet most people seem more concerned about money management than time management!
If you spend all of your time in your bedroom, with the door slammed shut, the shades pulled down, and the covers over your head, no money comes into your life. You have to use your time to create money.
How do we use out time wisely? We get an education, we interview, we network and develop relationships. We acquire skills. And to the extent that we mix all of that together, we get the money we earn in this world. If you want more money from this world, don't spend any more time. Just use it differently.
And, we all invest some of our time already. We would not be where we are in life now if we did not. The issue is how much more of our time are we willing to consciously invest? The problem for many of us is that we find our days and weeks are taken by "expensing" our time, and we call this "time management".
When we spend our time, it's gone. We enjoy a current benefit but get no real significant payback in the future. You and I spend most of our time doing this. We watch a program on TV, we clean the house, we go to work, and do the job. (Arguably, there may be some future benefits from these activities, but they are minimal.)
When we invest our time, like a farmer planting the seeds in the ground, we get little current benefit, but a long-term payoff.
A case in point. Arnie is a plant manager. He goes to work every day like his co-worker, Eddie. Both do their jobs well. Both are getting along. They expend much of their time in similar ways. But there is one difference. Arnie takes out one hour per day each evening to work on an Internet business he has created. In the beginning, Arnie knew nothing about how to go about doing it, but he searched for and found the answers. Typically, it is from 7-8 p.m. each evening while Eddie is watching "Jeopardy" and "Wheel of Fortune".
After four years, Arnie has a business that earns more than his salary at the plant. Arnie will have more money to enjoy over the years and a more "Golden" retirement. Not only that, but when Arnie goes to work, he no longer "has to", to get a paycheck. He goes because he "wants to". His attitude on the job is a little sharper and because of this, Arnie was offered the promotion to Senior Vice-President. Eddie believes you get in life what life gives you. Arnie believes you make of life what you want.
With a financial budget for money management, we allocate our scarce financial resources between expense and investment. We ought to do the same with our time management. Over the next week, we will all have 168 hours. There's your time budget. How much of your time will you allocate toward the investment side? The answer is in your control. To get a higher rate of return in our future, we need to consciously invest more of our time. The higher the ratio of time "invested" versus time "spent" today, the higher the payback tomorrow.
